Core Of Steel, Heart Of Gold
by Factora Arch
Summary: Silver has lived in an apocalypse for all his life, so getting thrown back in time seemed pretty nice until his ancestor showed up. Before paradoxes can ensue, the Triple S gets blasted into another dimension. There are two problems though. Sonic got fused with Shadow's doppelganger, and if they don't get home soon, the threesome will be warped out of existence!


Chapter One: The Arrival

Most stories begin with something like "It was a dark and stormy night," or "I'll never forget the bright sunny day that it happened on." But, though the weather meant that yes, it WAS dark and kind of stormy in its own way, it was actually the middle of the day; but then again, no one but the very few birds left alive knew that. The thick shell of smoke and ash surrounding the entire planet meant that it was very hard to tell day from night, and the fire certainly didn't care.

What's that? What fire, you ask? Why, the unquenchable living fire that burned relentlessly around the entire planet and sought to consume all, of course! It had been there for years and years, decades upon decades of roaring deadly flames. The source of this fire was a creature known as a Flame Wraith, a being made entirely of fire and rock. It had chosen to dwell in a once-bustling and happy city that now lay in ruins. Only one person lived there besides the Flame Wraith, and he wasn't going to be alive for much longer. Fourteen years of starvation, inhaling a mixture of smoke, ash, and toxins, and next to no water had finally sapped away all of what little strength he had.

He knew this. It actually didn't seem all that bad. He had known that he was going to die one day. In fact, he hadn't expected himself to last as long as he had. He would have preferred dying knowing that he'd helped another person survive, but…there was nobody there but him anyway. Not since his parents had died when he was just five.

Silver the Hedgehog gazed over the burning city, his hollow gold eyes drinking in what would be the last thing he saw. His fur would've been a shimmering albino grey had it not been covered in ash and dirt. Parts of his body were horribly burned, the fur singed away to reveal infected red welts. He wore large cuffs around his wrists and ankles and an odd aqua marking was on the back and palm of each hand, as well as on the top of each paw. Each breath wheezed in and out of his lungs.

Silver had wavered and now he lay down quietly, idly counting his bones and obediently waiting for his death to come. Fourteen years. Pretty long life. His telekinetic powers had probably helped with that, but…eh. When you died, you died. It was just part of being alive. He closed his eyes.

Suddenly a reverberating tone shook the ledge beneath him and Silver's eyes flew open. He felt himself getting pulled backwards by wind of some kind. Using the last of his strength, he turned his head; and adrenaline shot through his veins.

Silver tried to get to his knees to escape the ugly cyclonic rip in the air, to run, to crawl, to do anything. But he was too exhausted. Closer and closer he was pulled, until finally he was sucked in.

Inside the rip, colors spiraled hypnotically and everything seemed far too vibrant. Silver saw things he didn't understand; a glowing winged figure that was too bright to look at, two monstrous beasts locked in a brutal fight under a bright round thing in the sky he seemed to remember his mother calling the moon, a flying human girl wearing armor who had a majestically terrifying look in her eyes somehow effortlessly stopping a battle between two amazingly strong foes by simply holding out her hands inside of a firestorm of golden energy, three different versions of himself all standing together, their hands linked as they combined their power to fight off something. None of it made any sense to him and some of the images even frightened him. Others filled him with confusion or wonder.

But all of this was stopped when Silver suddenly came crashing out of another rip into GOODNESS knew where. It was so bright and clean and…and-.

Princess Sally Acorn let out a yelp of surprise as a portal of some kind opened and an emaciated young hedgehog with filthy fur and countless awful wounds came flying out. "OH!"

Bunnie Rabbot was even more surprised than Sally. "Oh mah stars!"

Antione, her husband, exclaimed in his heavy French accent, "What in ze name of-?!"

Silver sat up weakly. Cautiously, he tried breathing in. He was very surprised that he didn't start coughing and that he was able to fill his lungs all the way. He stayed there for a second, simply breathing, and then looked around and softly rasped out, "W-. Where am I? What's going on?"

A two-tailed fox rushed over and gently supported Silver's back. "Whoa! Take it easy, buddy!"

Bunnie seemed to be mortified. "Oh mah stars, the poor boy's so SKINNY!"

Antoine nodded as he knelt by Silver: "Ze kid looks like a skeleton on a diet!"

Silver couldn't believe what he was seeing. "You, all of you, you're all so well-fed; how?"

Sally stuck her head out into the corridor and yelled at the top of her lungs, "Someone get a medic, NOW!"

Bunnie gently ran her roboticized hand over Silver's ribs. "When was the last time you ate somethin', honey?"

Silver had to think. "I…I think it was ten days ago."

Bunnie WAS mortified now. She stood up and bellowed, "SOMEBODY GET THIS BOY FOOD!"

Nicole the Holo-lynx appeared out thin air, her big kind eyes shimmering with compassion. "Slow down, Bunnie. If he's gone without food for that long, he can't eat normally. He needs an IV."

"So I have to wait to feed the starvin' child?" Bunnie asked, slightly miffed.

Nicole nodded. "Don't worry, there'll be plenty of time for you to cook for him once he can eat solid food."

A gang of people in white medical outfits came sprinting in. One of them saw Silver and gasped. "Who in-?"

But Silver had succumbed to the oblivion of a faint.

Silver inhaled sharply and sat up. He was in a soft white bed. For the very first time in his life, he wasn't in pain. In fact…he didn't feel like there was an urgent need for him to do anything. No fire to dodge, no rubble to search…maybe he HAD died. His mother had talked often about something called "heaven," saying that there was no pain or thirst or hunger or death there and that if you believed in a person he couldn't quite remember the name of, when you died, you'd go to heaven and live forever. Was this what she'd been talking about? A place that fire could not reach?

There was a slight noise on Silver's left. He turned to see a badger girl with a playfully friendly look in her sparkling blue eyes. She noticed he was looking at her and leapt up, sticking her head out the doorway. "Hey, nurse! He's up!"

Silver waited until she'd pulled her head back in to ask, "Where am I?"

The badger smiled. "You're in the medical wing of the Freedom Fighters's base. You know, you're real lucky that you appeared where and when ya did. The nurse told me that any later and you would've been a goner. My name is Sticks, by the way."

Freedom Fighters. There was something oddly familiar about that name. His father had told him stories about a time before the Flame Wraith and Silver seemed to remember hearing that name. An odd thought struck him. "What year is it?"

"It's **4089**."

Silver inhaled sharply. He was two hundred years in the past? **_HOW?_** Had that rip in the air been a time portal of some kind? Shock flooded him as he realized the implications of this.

The glass of water next to him suddenly shattered inexplicably. At the same time, a chair was hit with some kind of invisible force and went clattering across the room.

Sticks's eyes narrowed. "I _knew_ this place was haunted. I ain't afraid of any dumb ol' ghost. Show yourself, ya phantom booger!"

Silver was snapped out of his shock. "No, no, that was actually me. Sorry."

Sticks gazed at him and cocked her head. "Eh? You're the ghost?"

Silver snorted. "No, I just have these powers. Where are my cuffs? I didn't mean to break anything, but my powers are a little too easy to activate if I don't have my cuffs."

"You mean your bracelets and anklets? The doc hadta take em off to bandage you up. I was actually just fiddlin' with them; wonderin' what they were for, ya know."

For being two hundred years in the past, Silver felt surprisingly at ease. Maybe it was just how friendly Sticks was. "Can you hand them to me? I don't want to break anything; a-anything else, that is." he added, cringing as he glanced at the remains of the glass.

Sticks handed him his cuffs.

Silver clicked them into place and then grinned at Sticks. He stuck his hand out and the toppled chair was surrounded by an aqua glow. It floated into the air and moved over to where it had been earlier, then was gently set down.

Sticks's jaw dropped. "You can move things with your mind?!" She chortled. "And mister blue speed mouse thinks HE has cool powers. What's your name?"

Silver paused before answering. Come to think of it, he didn't know his last name. Still, would it be safe to tell his name to Sticks? He didn't want to erase himself from existence…but…one simple name wouldn't do much, would it? There were times where two people had had the same name. "It's Silver."

A nurse poked her head in and gasped when she saw Silver. "Oh! He's up! Sticks, why didn't you use the comm?"

Sticks's voice dripped with suspicion as she replied, "I don't trust that thing. Eggman could be listenin' to every word we say over the comm for all we know. Besides, we got ta talkin' and I kinda forgot."

Silver inhaled deeply, drinking in the clean air. "How long was I out for?" he asked politely.

The nurse smiled warmly. "Four days. You should be able to eat some solid food now."

Suddenly a rabbit with partially robotic limbs rushed in holding a large bowl of something that smelled amazing. "As soon as ah heard you were startin' to wake up some, ah went and made this soup for yah. Mah name's Bunnie, sweet boy."

Another, much younger, rabbit poked her head around Bunnie's side. "Are you feeling better, mister?" she asked in a sweet, gentle voice.

Sticks snorted. "Considerin' that he's recovered quickly from bein' at death's door, I'm guessing he's feelin' MUCH better, Cream."

Silver took the broth from Bunnie and sipped. His eyes widened; it tasted like the liquid essence of euphoria was flowing down his throat. The starved hedgehog gulped down the entire bowlful of soup in seconds and before anyone realized what had just happened, he was licking the last few drops out of the bottom of the bowl.

Bunnie blinked. "Whoa!"

"I didn't know that anybody except for mister Sonic could eat that fast." Cream chirped.

Silver finished licking the bowl. "Who's Sonic?"

An amiable voice spoke from the doorway. "Just me."

Silver turned to see a lanky blue-furred hedgehog in his upper teens leaning nonchalantly against the door frame. He wore simple white gloves, thick red and white sneakers, and a tan neckerchief. On his face was a friendly grin and his green eyes glittered with vitality. Something about his relaxed demeanor simply screamed that he was like the personification of wind; his sleek but powerful frame, his mischievous and cocky daredevil attitude. He looked like a hero. "You know, kid, you sent the Freedom Fighters into a conniption and a half. Everyone was checking you out the first day you were here."

Silver grinned. "I was just sleeping. What's so interesting about sleeping?"

Sonic chuckled. "Evidently something about you doing it is; there were like fifty people hanging around your room for a while." He stuck out his hand.

Silver took Sonic's hand to shake it, but something that was more than just electricity shocked down his arm the instant his hand touched Sonic's. Silver inhaled sharply and his pupils shrank to slits. He started to gasp.

Sonic pulled away, confused. "Kid? You okay?"

Silver suddenly let out a panicked scream and arched his back. Something seemed to have taken hold of him; Silver's eyes were wild, looking at something that only he could see. He had gone from being at peace to being in the middle of what looked like a seizure of some kind in a split second.

Then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he collapsed. On the monitors next to him, his rapid heartbeat suddenly stilled completely.

Chaos erupted and doctors came sprinting from all directions, rocketing past Sonic into Silver's room.

Taken aback, Sonic looked at his hand. Then he slunk out amidst all the cacophony and panic, afraid, confused, and ashamed.

Chapter Two: Just a Normal Kid Who Is In No Way a Time Traveler

Silver opened his eyes. He was still in that soft white bed, but this time a dark-looking hedgehog with red stripes in his black fur and crimson-colored eyes was standing at the end of Silver's bed. His eyes never left Silver.

"Hello." Silver cautiously said.

The dark hedgehog said nothing.

"Have…Have you been standing there this whole time watching me?"

"Yes."

"…Why?"

"To make sure your heart doesn't stop again."

Silver pulled back the sheets and noticed that he was wearing long white, aqua, and navy blue boots, as well as pristine white gloves that the aqua glow from his markings easily shone through. "Uh…whose boots are these?"

"Sally bought them for you."

Silver narrowed his eyes. "Do you speak in more than one-syllable words?" he said sarcastically, being slightly annoyed at this odd hedgehog's short answers.

"Not unless I have to."

"What's your name?"

"Shadow. And you are Silver."

"Yes."

Sonic sheepishly walked in. "Hi…sorry for whatever I did back there. You were out for a day and a half this time."

Silver said in a voice with a dark undertone, "I don't think it was your fault."

Sonic sighed and grinned. "Just FYI, there's this guy named Eggman. Recently he's been trying his hand at raiding the base we're in. If there's an attack, you should probably go into the basement. He's a pretty bad dude."

"Wait, but-." Silver suddenly saw a pair of red robotic eyes in the shadows behind Sonic. He gasped. "LOOK OUT!" he shouted as he catapulted himself out of his bed. He slammed into the robot behind Sonic and pinned it in his telekinetic grip.

Sonic whirled and yelped. "GET BACK, SILVER, IT'S DANGEROUS!"

Silver's eyes blazed with a bright aqua glow. "Trying to kill him, huh?" he hissed through his teeth. "Let's see how well you can do that with a metal bar going through your head!"

A chair was yanked into the air. An IV pole flung itself after the chair. The railing around the bed twisted itself off and joined the chair and IV pole in whirling around Silver and the robot, all of the aforementioned surrounded in that eerie glow.

Sonic yelled in shock. "WHAT THE FRACKLE?!"

Shadow's eyes widened. "Holy nightshade tea leaves!" he howled.

Silver swung his splayed right hand at the robot. The railing wrapped itself around the robot as the chair smashed itself over its head. Silver bared his teeth in a fierce grimace. "Take THIS!"

The IV pole smashed through the robot's head. Sparks flew everywhere and the robot collapsed.

There was a shocked silence. Silver turned to see Sonic and Shadow staring at him, their jaws slack.

Finally Shadow managed to choke out, "That's a…that's…a powerful ability you got there, kid."

Silver was a little bit surprised as well. "I didn't know that I could pick up that many things or throw that hard."

Sonic finally shook his awe away. "I didn't know you even had the strength to STAND, let alone destroy Metal Sonic in thirty seconds!"

Silver grinned. Then he realized that his stomach was growling very loudly. "Could…Could I maybe have more of that soup Bunnie made for me earlier?"

Sonic chuckled. "Absolutely!" He walked over to a button on the wall.

Silver glanced at Metal Sonic and a movement caught his eye. The jet on the robot's back was opening. As he watched, a small tube clicked out and swiveled around to point at SONIC.

Sonic was right in the middle of calling Bunnie when Silver suddenly slammed into him. At the same time, there was a short, sharp "phewt!" of air and a dart embedded itself in Silver's hip.

Silver let out a scream of pain. "OW-! My legs, my legs!" His legs went limp under him and he collapsed onto the floor, writhing in pain.

A hologram sprang out of Metal Sonic's unmangled eye. It was of a bald and rather large man with a very large mustache. "Nyah ha ha! If you're seeing this, Sonic, that means you've been hit by my newest invention! I decided to put something a little extra in this Metal Sonic; a hypodermic dart containing a neuro-vascular serum aimed to affect your legs. You won't be able to run until it wears off! Meanwhile, I'll be attacking the base, and you won't be able to do anything but watch! Au revoir, my spiky arch-nemesis!" The hologram vanished.

Sonic's eyes were wide with awe. "You-. You took the dart for me…" he stammered. "You just saved my life TWICE. When you've only just barely half-recovered from starvation."

Silver looked up and grinned weakly. If Sonic had been able to hear the thoughts running through his mind, then Sonic probably would've had a minor coronary, for the most prominent thought going through Silver's mind was this: Are you proud of me, great-grandfather?

Suddenly the base shook and the rumble of an explosion followed.

Sonic whirled. Then his fur turned dead black and his eyes turned pure white. An insane, gleeful fury took hold of him as black mist erupted around him. "EGGMAN, I SWEAR, IF THAT'S YOU MAKING THE BASE SHAKE, I WILL KICK YOU INTO THREE MONTHS FROM NOW!" He was gone in a split second.

Shadow picked Silver up. "Kid, why did you risk your life like that? You had a seizure because of him."

Silver murmured to himself, "I had to save him…would've been erased otherwise…"

Shadow nearly dropped Silver. "Oh, my gash, you're a time traveler."

Silver's eyes bulged. "What?! No! No, no, I'm not a-!"

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Shadow ground out as he placed Silver back on the bed.

"No…"

"Do you think I'm deaf?"

"no…"

Shadow sat down on the end of Silver's bed. "You had a dream last time you passed out and started screaming about fire, poison, and rubble. This world's future is apocalyptic, isn't it?"

Silver wilted before Shadow's withering glare. "Promise not to tell anyone?" he choked out.

Shadow didn't say anything, but his eyes started to glow.

Silver swallowed. "Y-. yes. Yes it is. I heard rumors that in other parts of the world, they were able to start making repairs and rebuilding civilization, but not where I live yet."

Shadow spoke. "What destroys this world?"

"I don't know."

"Tell me."

"I don't know!"

"Tell me now!"

Silver finally lost his temper. He shouted, "No one ever told me how it happened, alright!? I've only found five people in my entire lifetime besides my parents! Nobody ever told me anything! My parents were going to tell me when I was fifteen, but they died when I was five!"

Shadow was silent for a moment. "...I see I'm not the only one around here with a dark life, then." he finally said.

"Huh?"

"I hate who I am and where I come from. I wasn't born, I was created. Created to be a weapon of mass destruction. My only friend was gunned to death in front of my eyes, and I've lost my memory so many times, I have no idea what's real about my past and what's a lie. You see these cuffs? I have to wear them all the time. They hold back my power so that I don't vaporize everything I touch."

Silver cocked his head. "Hold back your power? That's kinda like what my cuffs do."

"Wait; what? Let me see." Shadow frowned.

Silver unclasped one of his cuffs and handed it to Shadow.

Shadow took off one of the gold rings he wore around his wrist and put on Silver's cuff. Then he gasped. "These are exactly like my limiter rings. They were meant for me. To dampen my chaos energy. Kid-. How powerful are you when you have all of your cuffs off?" he asked in an awed-sounding voice, handing Silver's cuff back to him.

Silver snorted. "I once crushed an entire car into a ball. But that was when I hadn't eaten in a while, too. I-If I'm ever as healthy as you guys, I don't know WHAT I could do. This is the strongest I've felt in my entire life."

Shadow was shocked. "And you're still only halfway recovered...my word..."

Silver squirmed. "Ow, pins and needles." Then he looked at Shadow, fear in his golden eyes. "Please...Please don't tell anyone about who I am. I don't want to cause a paradox."

Shadow chuckled. "Considering I don't age, I would have found out in the future anyway. Don't worry. This conversation officially never happened."

"What conversation?" Silver grinned.

Shadow paused on his way out the door. "...I never thought that the grandkid of the person that ticks me off the most would be one of the few people I DON'T despise."

Chapter Three: Dark, Darker, Yet Oh Dear

For the next few days, Silver hung around Sonic. A lot. Far too much for a regular person. He was highly overprotective, jumping at everything from Sonic choking slightly during a meal to possible incoming missiles that ended up being a pair of hawks. It started to freak everybody out, especially Sonic.

No matter where Sonic was, Silver was creepily nearby. It didn't matter whether Sonic was just waking up in his parents's house after an overnight stay or if he was in the mess hall; Silver was there.

But when Sonic had been grabbed by a mech in the middle of fighting off Eggman and was now struggling to free himself, he was actually rather glad to see Silver come flying out of a window in the base and land on the back of Eggman's hovercraft.

Then there was a small explosion around Silver. Dead black energy erupted around him. Silver's boots and gloves vanished as his grey fur turned a shimmering raven color. Red bled into his aqua markings and the black that was around his eyes turned deadly crimson. Silver's golden eyes vanished, leaving eerie pure white orbs in their place. "PUT HIM DOWN."

Eggman turned to see a fiendish figure right behind him. He let out a yelp of surprise. Then he saw how thin and badly beaten-up the figure looked. "Yeah? What are YOU going to do about it? You look like you can't lift anything heavier than a small book!"

"That's where you're wrong." Silver ground out. "I can lift a small BUILDING." He stuck out his hand and simply closed it.

The claw holding Sonic was peeled apart by a red glow. As Sonic dropped to the ground, the mech itself was crushed into a soccer ball-sized sphere of metal.

Eggman's eyes bulged and he inhaled sharply.

Silver landed protectively in front of Sonic. He thrust his palms to the skies, let out a howl of rage, and EVERY SINGLE MECH ON THE ENTIRE BATTLEFIELD SHATTERED INTO POWDER.

Eggman let out a scream of fear as Silver leapt at him. Then he was yanked out of his seat and went flying two hundred feet before landing in a lake.

Sonic said in a slightly suspicious voice, "Silver...how long have you been able to do that?"

"Crush stuff like that? Well, really whenever I've had something to eat. When I'm not fainting." Silver replied, the mist around him starting to decrease.

Sonic's eyes narrowed. "No. I meant, how long have you been able to go dark?"

"Do what?" Silver replied in a wary tone.

"You've been acting weird around me. Normal people don't follow people around and jump at everything remotely dangerous to the person they're following. You're acting like a clingy bodyguard. Tell me the truth before I lose my temper. Where are you from and why are you guarding me?"

Silver remained silent, but black mist started to whirl around him. His red markings started to glow again.

Sonic inhaled. "Excuse me?"

Silver sounded like death when he replied, "Don't test me."

Sonic went limp and started to tremble. His breathing became shaky and he seemed to be trying to hold something back. Then he began to laugh insanely. His fur turned black and raven mist surrounded him. His quills lifted, defying gravity. "You…think you can out-dark me? You're just a weak little fool playing with titans." Sonic raised his head, revealing that his eyes were pure white and a frighteningly gleeful grin was on his face. "If you won't respond to reason, I guess I'll just have to pound the truth out of you!"

Screams erupted from the Freedom Fighters when they saw the battle that was about to take place. A massive space opened up around the two foes as everyone fled for their very lives.

Silver, even as enraged as he was, still realized the sheer amount of danger he was in. He was only about half as healthy as his great-grandfather was; one hit from Silver might hurt Sonic somewhat, whereas one blow from Sonic might kill Silver instantly.

With this in mind, Silver held out his hands and trapped Sonic in a telekinetic bubble. "It's no use!" he taunted. "You can't touch me!"

Sonic let loose with a punch that would've brought down an entire building, but the bubble merely reflected his force right back at him. His white-gloved fist slammed into his own face and knocked him off his feet. Blood started dripping out of Sonic's nose and mouth.

Silver didn't smile when he saw this. No emotion crossed his face. He was simply doing something that led to self-preservation. The young hedgehog was acting terrifyingly ruthless.

Sonic leapt up and let out a crazed howl of rage, his teeth bared in a grimace of hatred. Then he curled into a ball and shot into the side of the bubble. Silver's foe started bouncing around crazily inside the bubble like a ricocheting bullet; albeit a bullet that struck with the force of half an atomic bomb.

CRACK! A large portion of the bubble shattered. Sonic struck it again and the entire bubble was blown apart as he came flying out of it.

Silver was slammed to the ground. Fear flooded him and the black mist around him vanished. His fur went back to its dirty grey, his boots and gloves reappeared as aqua flooded back into his markings, the area around his eyes turned back to black, and his golden eyes took their place again.

Sonic gently placed his hands on either side of Silver's head and chortled, "Tell me why you've been following me or I blow your head off."

"Alright!" Silver whimpered. "Alright…great-grandfather."

Sonic narrowed his eyes. "Stop trying to confuse me."

Silver's eyes were filling rapidly with tears; Sonic was HEAVY, and that crazed grin made him fear for his life. "I'm not! I'm from the future." he sobbed. "I found out the other day when I touched you that you're my great-grandfather."

Sonic's grin vanished. "But that's impossible. Who would I…?"

Silver pointed to Amy about a hundred feet away, his hand shaking.

Sonic snapped out of his dark form, going completely back to normal in seconds. His eyes filled with fear of fate. "No. No. You're joking, right?"

Silver wheezed out, "Dark form. It gets passed down through the generations. I think my mom once told me that you had gotten your dark form from the time you used a fake version of something called a Chaos Emerald back when you and Shadow were fighting on…uh…I think it was called the ARK?"

Sonic's eyes went wide. He sat back off of Silver and stared at the young time traveler, breathing in shaky gasps of shock. "You-. Please let this be-. No-. I never thought we'd-. I-. I-. You're proof that Amy and I d-d-do love each other, like, like REALLY-. Oh, my word…"

Silver's gaunt frame began to shake with sobs. Of course he'd messed up. Now he might have doomed his own existence.

Sonic suddenly started looking around in his hammerspace frantically. "Teleport out, teleport out," he was muttering.

Then Shadow came skating out of nowhere at insane speeds, trying to stop what had already happened but unaware that it had. Right before he reached the group, his right skate hit a rock and he went flying into the air, slamming into Sonic and knocking a bunch of large gems out of Sonic's hand. The gems went tumbling into each other.

Suddenly a massive sphere of energy erupted out of the gems and enveloped all three hedgehogs. When everyone watching could see again, all the emeralds and the three hedgehogs had vanished completely.

Silver was extremely dizzy, but he knew that he was lying on grass. Pretty nice grass, too. There had been some kind of big flash of light and then Silver had slammed into this grass, but…what did that mean? Had something happened? Had he been sent somewhere? Was the reason this grass felt so nice because someone took care of it?

Suddenly someone next to him who definitely sounded both very young and very familiar spoke. "Are you okay, mithter?"

Silver still couldn't quite see straight, but he turned his head to where the voice was coming from nonetheless. "Yeah, I'm just really dizzy."

The blurry figure moved, possibly nodding. It was definitely a kid; it was way too short to be anything but a kid. "That'th good! It'll go 'way soon!" the kid lisped.

Silver's vision cleared and he got the biggest shock of his life as the blurry grey figure resolved itself into a younger, healthier version of HIM.

Chapter Four: "I'm Picking Up On Some Hostility in Your Tone, Sir."

Silver scrambled back. "WHAT THE-?!" he howled. "You-. You're me, but we can't have time-traveled-."

The other Silver cocked his head. "What'th your name? Mine is Saelvir."

Silver stammered out, "M-m-my name is Silver, but…" He sat up and looked around. Somehow he had ended up in a playground that was on the grounds around a massive castle? WHAT IN THE WORLD? "Uh…Saelvir? Where a-?"

Abrupt panicked yells cut him off. Silver turned to see a younger version of Sonic frantically shaking Shadow, who was lying on the ground unconscious. "Shedow! Shedow, please wake up!" the younger Sonic was yelling.

Silver saw Shadow's eyelid twitch and immediately telekinetically yanked the younger Sonic away from Shadow, floating him over to where Silver and Saelvir were.

Just in time, too. A split second after Silver had whisked younger Sonic away, Shadow let loose with a small explosion of crackling yellow energy and leapt up. "Who the FRICK was touching me?!"

Silver glared at Shadow. "Dude. Is that how you normally wake up? You blow up the bed every morning?"

Shadow narrowed his eyes. "Keep talking if you want to die."

Younger Sonic poked his head out from behind Silver and hesitantly said, "I'm picking up on some hostility in your tone, sir."

Shadow's eyes bugged out. "Sonic? What in the-?"

Younger Sonic stepped out from behind Silver. "No, no, no, you're pronouncing it wrong. It's Sonaic; SOH-naic. Yeesh. How do you forget a prince's name?"

Shadow looked like he'd seen something he couldn't unsee. "Prince?"

Saelvir piped up. "Yeah! Mommy and daddy are the queen and king of Moabiuth."

Shadow's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he collapsed onto the ground in a faint.

Silver rushed over. "Shadow? Shadow? Shadow!" Then something made itself apparent. "Wait; Shadow faints? I thought he was the guy that wasn't fazed by anything." Confused, Silver turned to Sonaic. "Is there, uh…something like a stream nearby?"

Sonaic pointed to a large stream that flowed into a pond. "Matter of fact, there's a swimming area." He snorted. "You could just dump him in."

Silver rolled his eyes. "Not unless I had a death wish. I get the feeling he'd grind even me into powder if he got thrown in a pool."

Sonaic's grin vanished. "Uh…I know for a fact that Shedow would never do that. He'd probably laugh and pull the thrower in after him."

Silver walked over to the pool. "Yeah? Well, Shadow is way more dangerous than your Shedow; and a LOT crankier."

Sonaic didn't seem fazed. "Mmmm…"

Silver had knelt by the pool and marveled at how clear the water was when Sonaic and Saelvir hurled something into the pool and made a massive splash.

Silver immediately realized what the mischievous pair had done, but it was too late. Shadow was already conscious and treading water, his red eyes glowing and annoyance on his face.

"Thank your lucky stars these skates are waterproof." he growled out at Sonaic and Saelvir. Then he turned to Silver.

Silver frantically scrambled backwards, expecting a chaos spear to the face. "Shadow, I tried to stop them-."

Shadow suddenly dove underwater. A few seconds later, there was a flash of yellow light and half the pond was blasted into the air. When all the water had landed, Shadow rose out of the depths of the pond and surfaced in the midst of the steam.

Silver was completely soaked and beyond bewildered. He stared at Shadow.

Shadow grinned. "I've always wanted to see what a chaos blast does underwater. Never got the chance until now."

Silver shook his shock away. "So you're not going to kill me."

"It's just a little water." Shadow chuckled as he got out. "And they're just kids."

Silver glanced at the dripping wet pair of goofballs standing across the pond from them. "I didn't know you were so…okay with kids."

"They remind me of the days I spent with Maria, the days when I was innocent and happy. Now where's our resident blue idiot? I need to tell him that he sent us to another dimension."

Silver gasped. "Another WHAT?!" He was silent for a minute. "Okay, but why are you so calm about it now if you fainted earlier?"

Shadow froze. "Uh…That was the result of dimensional travel and not fear."

"Uh-HUH." Silver was not swayed. "Sure it was."

Shadow's eyes started to glow.

Silver immediately shut up.

Then Silver noticed someone he didn't recognize who was lying behind some swings in a small crater. He shook the water out of his fur and floated over. "Hello? Are you okay?"

The blue and red hedgehog moaned and sat up. He had many stripes and odd markings. His shoes looked like a combination between Sonic's sneakers and Shadow's Air Skates, and he wore a flowing brown cape that was one piece of cloth. "Silver, is that you…?"

Silver immediately went on guard. "How do you know my name?"

The hedgehog turned to reveal multicolored eyes. "You forget your great-grandpa or whatever that fa-." Suddenly his eyes bulged and he let out a high-pitched squeal. "OH, FRICK!"

Silver cocked his head. "Uh…I'm just looking for a guy named Sonic…blue fur…brown neckerchief…"

The blue and red hedgehog moaned, putting his face in his hands. "You found him, and Prince Shedow, too."

Chapter Five: Aura

Silver blinked. "What?"

"Cross-dimensional travel requires molecular disintegration; I would know. This isn't the first time I've ended up in another dimension. Soni- I came flying out of a portal and accidently slammed into poor Shedow, we ended up merging into one person-."

Sonaic came blasting over, closely followed by Saelvir and Shadow. "Shedow? No. No way."

Sonic/Shedow groaned, his head still in his hands. "You have a crush on Amethyst, Amy Rose's doppelganger that's your age. You and I- Shedow were planning to prank Lord Waerfole with a water balloon, a lawn ornament, and a bag of flour."

Sonaic's eyes widened and big tears started dripping out of them. He began to sob and shot away into some bushes.

Shadow knelt next to Shedow/Sonic. "Sonic, you're kidding, right? Please be kidding."

Sonic/Shedow's chest was heaving as he hyperventilated. "You know what's scaring me right now? I keep nearly referring to myself as a different person. I, I'm just really freaked out and I don't know why. Stuff worse than this has happened to me before...right?"

"...I bet that's coming from your other side, the kid named Shedow. He's probably never done this kind of thing before."

Shedow/Sonic nodded and inhaled deeply, trying to calm down. After a little bit he panted, "Call me Aura."

Silver frowned. "What?"

"Call me Aura. I can't be called by either of my names because neither person is just them. I may have Sonic's personality, but gracious, is Shedow influencing me."

Everyone nodded.

Saelvir climbed into Aura's lap and looked up into Aura's face, big tears in his eyes. "Brufer…?" he sniffled.

Aura nodded. "I'm here, Saelvir. I'm here."

Saelvir clutched Aura and began to cry.

Suddenly Sonaic came flailing out of the bushes. "GUYS! It's Lord Waerfole!"

Aura made a FACE. "Crud. If he sees random strangers that look a lot like the princes just hanging out with them, he's gonna throw us three older ones in prison or worse."

Shadow scoffed. "I'd like to see him try."

Aura set Saelvir down and yanked Silver with him up into a tree. "Fine. You can stay down there and wait for the war hero with a weaponized interchangeable cybernetic implant and a record-breaking IQ."

Shadow quietly climbed the tree that Aura and Silver were in and hid in a thick bunch of leaves near a branch on the bottom.

An imposing figure that commanded authority strode into the playground and stood near the tree that the three intruders were in. "Sonaic, what mischief have you and Shedow been cooking up this time? When I hear an explosion and yelling, it HAS to be you two."

Aura quietly snickered. Then the branch he was on made a very disturbing cracking sound and he suddenly was plummeting. He smacked into the ground, but before he could get up, a hand grabbed his ankle and he was yanked into the air, dangling upside down. "WAUGH!"

Waerfole was at least 5 feet tall, which seemed colossal to poor 3' Aura. He wore a lab coat and a belt. In place of his right hand was a mechanical claw that was clamped around Aura's ankle. He was a very groomed and professional-looking fox, but a spark burned in his blue eyes that said that anyone who caused harm to those he cared about would spend the rest of their very short lives regretting it. Two large fox tails swished slowly behind him. "WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" he bellowed.

Shadow frowned. "Huh. I never knew Tails could be such a bad-a-."

Silver narrowed his eyes. "NOT around the kids, bucko. I'm also sure the author doesn't approve."

"NONONO PLEASE DON'T HURT ME! I ha-have a very g-good reason for being here, heheh." Aura yelped.

"You had better." Waerfole ground out.

Silver, who had never climbed a tree before, made the mistake of leaning out too far. He lost his balance and fell. "Ack!"

Shadow caught Silver before he hit the ground, but their cover had been blown sky-high.

Lord Waerfole stared at Shadow and Silver. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then he said in an awed voice, "You're from another dimension, aren't you?"

"Well, that was fast." Shadow snorted.

"I'm a scientist; don't insult me."

Aura grinned. "Hey Shadow; you know who he reminds me of? A certain angsty half-alien."

Shadow glowered. "Don't insult me."

Silver had to stifle a snicker as he floated down to the ground.

Waerfole frowned. "...I see Saelvir's, I see Shedow's..." He looked down at Aura. "Whose doppelganger are YOU?"

Aura grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, funny story; I'm actually Sonaic's doppelganger, but the blast of energy that brought us Mobians here made me accidently merge with Shedow. I think we hit each other? I don't really remember; it kinda happened in a blur."

"You WHAT?!"

Aura's grin disappeared. "Shedow and Sonaic's doppelganger, Sonic, that's me, the dominant personality, got...fused?"

Waerfole accidently dropped Aura out of horror. "Oh, Lord, help me."

Aura sat up and grouchily rubbed his now-bruised shoulder, grumbling under his breath.

Waerfole noticed and snapped out of his shock. "Oh my gash, I am so sorry!" he stammered as he helped Aura up. "This is, uh, not how I thought my day would go." he laughed sheepishly.

Silver suddenly got an idea. "Hey; didn't you say that the chaos energy was what merged you in the first place?"

Aura cocked his head. "Yeah, why?"

"Well, then, use your chaos emerald to split you and Shedow, and after that we can use it to go home."

Aura's red and green eyes lit up. "I have all seven with me!" He started rummaging around in his hammerspace. Concern began to spread over his face after a few seconds. "Um…" He stuck his arm farther in. "No, no, no, no, no..." Finally he got so desperate that he stuck his head into hammerspace to search for the emeralds. When he pulled his head back out, he had a look on his face that screamed "we are doomed." "They're gone. We have no way of getting home OR of splitting me."

Chapter Six: *angry hedgehog noises*

Shadow's eyelid twitched. "You LOST THEM?!"

Aura grinned guiltily. "I…misplaced them?"

Shadow leapt down from his branch, rage in his glowing eyes, and slapped Aura in the face so hard that Aura went flying head over heels and landed in a bush ten feet away. "THAT'S THE SAME THING, YOU IDIOT!" he bellowed. Suddenly he drew back, calming down in the space of a second as his anger was replaced with confusion…and a hint of fear.

Silver howled, "What the frackle was that for!? You could've killed him and then where would I be, huh?! Erased from frickin' existence!"

Shadow skated over to Aura, who was badly dazed, and gently helped him up. "I...I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry." he replied in an unnerved voice. Then he teleported away and let the tremble that had wanted to show itself come out. _What's wrong with me?_ he thought. _Sonic rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but the last time I got that angry with him was back when we had only just become allies_.

Sonaic tentatively came over. "Do...do you need help or anything?"

Shadow came out of his troubled musing. "Just gimme a minute…"

Aura shook off his daze and gazed at Shadow, deeply worried about his friend. "Hey… Waerfole? Do you have any experience in pychology?"

Waerfole shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I know the basics, but not much else. I'm really more of an-."

"Inventor, I know. You remind me of a friend of mine."

"Actually, I was going to say chemist."

"Hm…Listen, the thing is that Shadow is usually nowhere NEAR as open as he's acting. I've seen robots that show more emotion than he does. Is there something wrong with him?"

Waerfole thought. "It could be that he's going through something and has finally decided to open up. Emotional fluctuations are normal for everybody."

"I've known the guy for fifteen years and only seen him express emotion once! Besides controlled anger, that is. It's more like angst than anything else."

"Well, that just shows that he's been hiding a lot of emotion. And the thing about emotion is that you can only hide it for so long. It could be that he's finally stopping his efforts to hide it."

Aura sighed. "That only kind of makes sense, but...okay. You know more about this kind of thing than me."

There was a breath of wind and someone landed in the playground next to Lord Waerfole. Shadow and Silver immediately dived for cover.

The newcomer was a woman; but she wasn't an anthropomorphic. She had long shimmering green hair the color of ivy leaves and wore a lovely white and green dress. Her big sparkling eyes were sky blue. Out of her hair on the top of her head bloomed two large flowers. "Miles!" she sang out. "Have you seen-?" She trailed off when she spotted Aura. "Who's this kid?"

Waerfole had a very very fake smile on his face. "One of my new assistants, Nebula. He's a little bit of a handful."

"Oh really? Is that why you look like you've been sat on? What exactly has he been doing?" Nebula laughed cheerily.

Waerfole held his hands behind his back and motioned to Shadow and Silver to teleport themselves and the princes to a certain room on the ground floor of the castle. "Oh, nothing, just generally driving me up the wall." he laughed nervously.

His smile vanished completely when Nebula replied, "Uh-HUH. I know when you're hiding something. What's got you so high-strung?"

Waerfole thought quickly. "I'm working on a very, very finicky experiment. It, uh-. Gives normal people the ability to fly but I can't for the life of me get it to work!"

Nebula's eyes widened. "Gives people the ability to **fly**? No wonder you're so stressed! Anyway, I was just coming over to ask you where Prince Shedow and the rest might be. I thought you might know."

Waerfole hurriedly shook his head. "Nope! Haven't seen him! The formula is on a timer, I need to go continue working on it."

Nebula nodded. "I'll go tell Vibran and Opal that you haven't seen the kids, then. See you in a while, sweetie!" She flew off.

Waerfole flew in through the open window in his lab and let himself collapse into a nervous wreck. "Oh, criminy buttered biscuits, that was far too close for any comfort whatsoever, I nearly had an aneurism-."

Aura climbed in and lay on a chair with his back on the seat of the chair and his knees hooked over the top. "I think you did great."

Shadow cocked his head. "What are you DOING?"

Aura shrugged. "Shedow likes being upside-down. It's just one of his quirks."

Silver was busy looking around the lab. "You have a lot of chemicals and stuff, Lord Waerfole. I'm guessing I don't want to touch any of them?"

Waerfole composed himself. "Yes. I'm a master at chemistry. I'm not very good when it comes to machinery and rays and all that, though. And I get the feeling that in order to send you guys home, we can't exactly use chemicals." He sighed. "The biggest thing right now is keeping your identities safe from the king. If he finds out that one of his kids vanished on my watch-." Waerfole shuddered. "Frackle, I'm dead."

Silver walked over. "Hey, don't worry! If he does find out, we'll explain!"

"The man has swords that are bolts of energy coming from his hands! I'm worried that you wouldn't get the CHANCE to explain!"

Aura spoke up. "But if I talked to him, or even just said something I shouldn't know about, he'd know that something is up and not attack."

Waerfole shook his head. "Shadow and Silver need to disguise themselves. Aura, you look different enough that I don't think anyone will recognize you. Nebula is telling the king that you three are my new assistants. Granted, I've never HAD assistants before, but I also got her to think that I'm working on something extremely complex. As of now, you three work for me until we have built a way for you to get home."

Aura grumbled. "Nice."

Chapter Seven: Nebula Meets the Gang

Nebula suddenly glided delicately in through the window. "Miles, I don't think you introduced your-. OH MY WORD!" she yelled.

Waerfole wilted. "There is a perfectly logical explanation for this."

Nebula's steely glare could have melted iron. "What have you done?! Let me ask again: What. Have. You done?"

"It wasn't my fault, it was a complete accident, they'll vouch for me!"

"MILES!"

Waerfole sighed. "They're cross-dimensional doppelgangers of the princes. The worst part is that there was some kind of accident. Shedow and Sonaic's doppelganger…" He trailed of and moaned.

Aura sat up. "We're both right here. I, Sonic, was recovering from being disintegrated for cross-dimensional travel and I accidentally hit Shedow. We got merged into one person."

Nebula was enveloped in a shocked silence. Finally, she managed to choke out, "...Lord Miles Waerfole, if the king and queen find out about this, they will blast all your fur off."

Waerfole nodded and walked over to her. "I know! That's why I told the cover story about them being my assistants!" He turned to Shadow and Silver. "Go put some clothing on and disguise yourselves best you can."

Chapter Eight: Nightmares

About ten minutes after Nebula had met the doppelgangers, King Vibran Metelloid knocked on the door of Lord Waerfole's lab. "Waerfole?" he called.

There was no answer from inside.

"Miles! Hey! Open up!"

There was still no answer.

Vibran thumped the door loudly with his fist. "Miles!" he shouted.

There was a stifled high-pitched squeal and a very loud clatter, but the door remained locked.

Vibran was a short-tempered man when it came to his kids. As he narrowed his eyes, long shimmering swords shaped out of pure green energy slid out of each of his palms. He let out a grunt of exertion and swung the twin blades up through the door. A large section of the top half of the door fell away. "WAERFOLE!"

Inside, Shadow and Silver had disguised themselves as best they could and were now both trying to look busy. Aura was telling tales of his adventures to a wide-eyed Sonaic. Waerfole was trying to bury himself in equations and Nebula was playing with Saelvir.

As for Shadow and Silver's disguises, Shadow had put on a shirt and a pair of jeans. He'd also pulled his quills into a ponytail-like thing to disguise their very recognizable look. Silver, on the other hand, was wearing the top half of a tuxedo (complete with bowtie) and a pair of flowing pants. He had marked the two big quills on the back of his head with white-ish stripes. He also wore a mask that smoothed down some of his smaller front quills. It wasn't a very good disguise, but it was all that he'd had to work with.

Vibran retracted his blades. "Miles!"

Shadow nudged Waerfole.

Reader, the spectacular voice crack that came out of Lord Waerfole's mouth next was one that everyone in the room would remember. "y-ES?!"

Vibran stifled a smile. "I was coming in to ask if you'd seen the boys. Evidently you have. They bothering you at all?"

Waerfole shook his head and cleared his throat. "No. You, uh…you kinda killed the door."

Vibran snorted. "You wouldn't open it. What was I supposed to do?" Then he noticed Shadow, Silver, and Aura. "These your new assistants?"

Waerfole nodded. "Yes, yes, the, um, the dark one is Elliot and the masked one is Kieran. The one talking to Sonaic is Aura."

Vibran frowned. "Kieran, may I ask WHY you're wearing a mask?"

Silver thought fast. "Acid burns. This isn't the first time I've been a lab assistant."

Vibran cringed. "Ooh. Hey, Nebula's a nurse. I'm pretty sure that she'd be willing to give you pain ointment if the burns hurt. Anyway, I've got papers to sign. See you later, Miles, and feel free to kick the boys out if they start bugging you." He walked away.

Everyone in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.

Saelvir walked up to Silver and pulled at Silver's tux. "Why're you so skinny?" he asked.

Silver's ears drooped as he realized that what he was about to say would probably frighten little Saelvir. "It's because of where I'm from. I'm...kinda a time traveler. I came from an apocalyptic future."

Sonaic turned to stare at Silver. "Wait; so you're like actually starved?"

Silver immediately got defensive. "I-It's nothing, I'm not sta-."

"Yes, you are." Aura interrupted. "Take it easy. And definitely don't try to show up Shadow. Shadow has literal superstrength. Don't hurt yourself."

Silver glared at Aura, disgusted. He stuck out his hand and Aura rose into the air, surrounded by an aqua glow. "I think I can handle heavy things."

Aura shrugged. "Okay, I'm just saying that you don't want to overwork yourself. You're not quite as strong as you're trying to seem. It takes months to recover from starvation. You're also recovering from a lot of very nasty injuries. And your lungs have been inhaling toxic smoke all of your life. Again, rest when you need to."

Waerfole stood up, walked over, and let his eyes flick over Silver's gaunt figure.

Silver leaned back slightly. "Geeshing nightshade tea leaves, you're TALL."

Waerfole inhaled. "My boy, by all rights, you shouldn't even be on your feet, let alone working. Go sit down."

"But I can-."

"I mean it. I'm a Doctor. I have a PhD in medicine, not JUST chemistry. I took enough medical classes to know the effects of starvation. So sit down."

Silver reluctantly obeyed, sitting down on the battered couch that was against one of the walls.

Nebula fluttered over gracefully and sat next to Silver. She put her arm around him and pulled him slightly so that he was leaning on her shoulder. "You seem like you've been through a lot." she cooed.

Silver snorted. "Most of what I've endured is not kid-friendly."

Nebula turned away to gaze at Waerfole. "You are too self-contained, Silver. My husband fought in the war between the Medirex and... well, everyone else. It cost him his peace of sleep and his hand. But he does not try to deny it when he wakes up in the middle of the night having had nightmares."

Silver frowned. "What are nightmares?"

Nebula blinked and looked back down at Silver. "You don't know what nightmares are?"

"I don't know what a lot of things are. Living in an apocalypse means not that much time for anything except surviving."

Nebula was flabbergasted. "Uh…well… Nightmares are dreams that you have at night that scare you, that make you wake up afraid or sad."

Silver cocked his head. "I thought that's just what dreams in general were."

Nebula shook her head. "No, dreams can leave you feeling happy or excited or amused when you wake up. Not every dream is a nightmare."

"…Hmm." Silver made a mental note to try and remember if he'd ever had a dream later. "So, uh, you're not an anthropomorphic. How did you and Lord Waerfole meet?"

Nebula smiled as memories rose in her mind. "We met when my ship crashed on this world. I am a Cosmoid, an anthropomorphic plant, as opposed to you anthropomorphic animals. But just because Waerfole and I are of a different race does not mean that we cannot love each other."

Silver's eyes bugged out. "Wait; so you're-?"

Waerfole grinned and spoke from the other end of the room. "Yes. I fell in love with an herboid alien. It's not as weird as it sounds."

Suddenly Aura's communicator beeped. He tapped at it even though he was hanging upside-down off an empty bookshelf.

A very familiar voice crackled out of the miniature speaker on the communicator. "Sonic, if you can hear me, where are you?!"

Chapter Nine: Tails of a Great Best Friend

Aura tapped at the communicator again and turned on the video. "Tails, I'm fine, quit panicking!"

Tails the Fox frowned at the unfamiliar face in the hologram that had sprung out of his communicator. "Who the crud are YOU?"

Aura was silent for a minute. Then he let out a loud groan and performed a massive facepalm. "I'm an idiot, that's who. Uh, Tails, it's me, Sonic, but, uh... I'm actually stuck in another dimension. And that's not even the worst part. I accidentally got fused with Shadow's complete goofball of a doppelganger who's like twelve."

Tails grimaced. "Oof. This is gonna be messy."

Aura nodded. "Tell me about it. He's influencing my everything; my habits, my emotions, my attitude, even the way I refer to people! And on top of that, I feel really really bad about it. The poor kid's just twelve!"

"What about the chaos-?"

"Misplaced the dang things." Aura growled. "The really dumb thing is that I had all seven and now I have no idea where they are. It gets worse. Lil' Shedow is the son of the most powerful rulers of this world. And the other two have doppelgangers too, lil' ones, just like Shedow. All princes. Isn't that simply WONDERFUL? If the king finds out that one of his kids is missing and it's my fault, we're doomed. He's a powerful man, from what I hear."

Worry spread over Tails's face. "You need to get somewhere where he's NOT gonna find you. Like now."

"It's not quite that hopeless. We're being helped by your doppelganger and his wife Nebula to a) hide and b) get back home. They're both pretty smart; and DANG, I'm starting to like your doppelganger. He's basically an older, more serious you. Reminds me of Shadow a little bit; but only a little."

Waerfole walked over. "Is that my doppelganger you're talking to?"

Aura flipped a switch on the side of the communicator and the hologram of Tails became a full-size one. "Waerfole, meet Miles Prower, AKA Tails. Smartest person I know and my best friend."

Waerfole bowed elegantly. "Pleasure to meet you, Tails."

Tails chuckled, swishing his twin fox tails. "Same here! I've known about the existence of other dimensions for years, but I could never think of a way to get in contact. Sonic, listen; we have ONE shot to get you home before fluctuations start happening. I think the emeralds have done their annoying scattering thing again. I know where a few warp rings are and I'm gonna start looking for them as fast as I can, okay? Hang in there, buddy." The hologram vanished.

Aura grinned. "And this is why I like Tails so much. Knows literally exactly what to do almost half of the times I get into a bad spot."

A young tenor voice suddenly spoke next to him, coming from a ghostly figure in the air that looked like a younger version of Shadow with a crown-shaped red marking on his forehead. "And here I thought I was having a bad dream."

Aura let out an ear-shatteringly high squeal and fell off of the bookshelf. Everyone else yelped and stumbled back.

Shedow, for that is who the specter was, looked like he'd found raisins in what he'd thought was a chocolate-chip cookie. His arms were crossed and he was NOT pleased. "I got kicked out of my own dimension- even my own body- because you had to come flying into me."

Aura got up, his mismatched eyes wide. "What in the WORLD?"

Shedow moaned. "Now I'm only half in this dimension. I can't even touch anything!"

Waerfole nodded. "I did wonder why Aura wasn't switching personalities or had a completely merged personality."

Aura was flabbergasted. "That's why I'm so angry with myself! YOU'RE angry with me!"

"You think!?" Shedow bit out.

Aura wilted. "Listen, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to get sent to another dimension."

Shedow's cross expression vanished, to be replaced by one of shame and fear. "I know…"

"Listen, I know you're afraid, okay? But don't worry. We'll figure this out."

Shedow began to smile slightly.

Chapter Ten: "He's DEAD!"

Silver was watching all of this play out when he suddenly felt a small spark of electricity zap his hand. "Ow!" he yelped. His hand began to tremble.

Silver's eyes widened. More and more electricity was flowing through him. His heart started to beat in a strange way that made his breathing come in short, irregular gasps. Silver suddenly realized that he might be in VERY real danger. "Hospital-! Now!"

Waerfole turned and frowned. "What's the matter?"

Silver gasped out, "Heart-. Wrong-. Being shocked-. Hurry-."

Shadow's eyes bulged. "Do as he says! Get him to a hospital!" he bellowed.

Nebula leapt into action, scooping Silver up despite the numerous rather painful arcs of electricity crackling around him, and leaping out the window. She soared up to a window about three floors above Waerfole's lab and literally kicked it in so she could set Silver on a white hospital bed. She quickly hooked Silver up to an EEG. Then she snatched a defibrillator and began to charge the two paddles up.

Waerfole flew in through the shattered window just as Shadow and Aura teleported everyone else in. Sure enough, the little green on the monitor representing Silver's heartbeat was wildly erratic.

Silver abruptly passed out, but his body kept on tensing and jerking spastically. The mood grew incredibly tense. Silver was being electrocuted by some invisible current; badly electrocuted.

Waerfole's eyes widened. "His dimensional signature is exactly opposite ours. Shadow and Sonic are close, but Silver's is exact and the result is that it's killing him as the two frequencies clash. We need to find a way to stabilize him before it's too late! Why is his frequency slightly different from yours, Soni- I mean Aura?"

Shadow interrupted. "He's from two hundred years in the future of our timeline."

Waerfole gasped. "Two hundred years?! AND he's the survivor of an apocalypse?! HE'S DEAD! His heart is already weak from the apocalypse; it won't be able to withstand what he's going through."

All the blood drained out of Aura's face. "I have to watch my own great-grandkid DIE right in front of me."

Just then, Nebula, who had been working feverishly, let out a wail. The erratic heartbeat on the monitor had stilled completely. Silver's wild spasming had stopped and now he lay horribly still.

Nebula used a defibrillator on him once, twice, but to no avail. Silver the Hedgehog was dead.

Chapter Eleven: Miracles

Twenty minutes later, everything was chaos and shock. Sonaic and Saelvir were just kind of standing there, their wide eyes not looking at anything. Shadow was arguing vehemently with Lord Waerfole about what could've been done while Nebula sobbed in a corner. Shedow was floating by Silver's limp, lifeless body, staring with wide, horrified eyes. Aura was screaming into his communicator to Tails that Silver had just died right in front of him.

Shadow shouted, "Can't you do something?! He's just fourteen and only got to really live FOUR DAYS!"

Waerfole bellowed back, "He's been dead for twenty minutes! Nobody can do ANYTHING for him! It's too late!"

Shedow's abrupt gasp cut through all the hubbub. "Something's happening!"

Everyone rushed over to see small arcs of electricity sparking between Silver's fingers. The EEG suddenly blew up in a shower of electrical parts, but not before it displayed a heartbeat. A single heartbeat.

Nebula checked Silver's pulse and gasped. "He's coming back! His heart is beating regularly!"

Silver suddenly opened his shimmering golden eyes, shocking everyone. He inhaled, sat up, and simply stretched as if he'd woken up from a nap. And still sparks flitted between his fingers. The sparks started to jolt along Silver's back quills. More and more arcs of electricity surrounded Silver's back quills, and then something started to happen, something incredible.

Silver's back quills began to stretch and elongate. Giant bolts of electricity struck like lightning into the air around Silver; the young hedgehog was enveloped in a firestorm of electricity. His gaunt figure became much healthier. Scars healed, bones that had knitted oddly smoothed into place, fur grew back, all filth inexplicably vanished.

Aura yelled over the sizzling of voltage, "What's happening to him?!"

Waerfole shouted back, "I think some kind of ultra-rare dimensional anomaly! This is one in a google plex! The chances of this are so low, it would take someone directly influencing it for it to happen!"

Silver's back quills morphed into massive birdlike wings, growing pure white feathers. They grew huge in seconds. Then the electricity suddenly stopped, but Silver stood and spread his wings to their enormous full span of twelve feet, making everyone stumble back out of sheer surprise.

Silver's eyes were closed and he had a look of sheer peace on his face. He looked angelic; his fur a shimmering silver color, his markings glowing like stars, his pure white wings making him look terrifyingly majestic.

Everyone's jaws were hanging slack. Shadow looked like he'd seen the ghost of Maria baking cupcakes with Metal Sonic. Aura, Shedow, and Sonaic all looked like they'd gotten slapped by their best friend and didn't know how to react. Saelvir's eyes were the size of dinner plates, Nebula was kind of standing there awkwardly holding a defibrillator in her hands, and Waerfole was trying to say something but couldn't get any sound out.

Silver opened his eyes and glanced at the shattered window. Before anyone knew what was happening, he'd raced over and leapt out. He came whipping back up into view just a few seconds later, laughing as he soared.

Aura climbed out and activated Shedow's rocket skates so he could fly after Silver. He blasted up into the clouds and was immediately buzzed by Silver. "Silver, WAIT!"

Silver curved back around and shot by Aura at insane speeds, grabbing Aura's hand and pulling Aura along with him. He was giddy with joy and it showed in his wild smile and his shining eyes.

Aura had to stifle a chuckle. "Silver, we need to land, you might be-."

"I saw the other side."

"What?"

"Some people wonder what happens after death. I know what happens."

Aura flailed to a halt. "WHAT?"

Silver tread air. The draft from his massive beating wings was enough to clear a hole in the thick layer of clouds that floated right below his boots. A single beam of sunlight shone through and Silver suddenly dove down it.

Aura, kind of miffed, followed Silver. "Would you land for one second?!"

Grinning, Silver circled around the highest spire of the castle and gently landed on the roof, looking out over the beautiful countryside. Then he took off again, this time flying laps around the castle.

Vibran took a sip of tea, looked out his window, and sprayed tea everywhere. "OPAL!" he yelped.

His wife came running. "What is it, Vibran?"

Vibran pointed out the window. "Watch. In just a few seconds, he'll come around again."

Opal peered through the big bay window. "Who will? Is Shedow doing something?"

Vibran shook his head. "No, it's Waerfole's new assistant, Kieran."

"The masked one that looks a lot like Saelvir?"

"Yes; him. I swear he's sprouted wings and is flying laps around the castle."

Opal frowned. "Are you sure that-.

Suddenly Kieran flew into view, big white wings beating on his back. He noticed the royal couple staring at him through the window and waved. Then Aura tackled him and the two of them went tumbling out of view.

Vibran turned to Opal. "Opal…Didn't Nebula say something about Miles developing a concoction that allowed people to fly?"

Aura panted, "Silver-."

Silver shot upwards and flew on his side, letting his right wing slice through the clouds and make a small amount of cloud billow behind him. "You're It, Aura! Tag!" he laughed.

Aura had concern all over his face. "Silver, please stop."

Silver chuckled and angled his wings downward. The two flying hedgehogs landed together in Waerfole's lab.

Aura stared at Silver as everyone else (everyone but the royal couple) teleported in. "You, uh…you were dead for twenty minutes."

"Dead? Was I?" Silver chortled. "Death doesn't mean anything to me now. I met someone."

Aura's confusion grew. "You said that you saw the other side. What was there that's got you in such a weird mood?"

Silver smiled as he was enveloped in a happy memory. "It doesn't matter WHAT'S there. It only matters who was there. I met the Creator."

In the back, Waerfole choked on air.

Silver continued. "I admitted that I'd…I've done a lot of things that I'm not at all proud of, treated people like they were lower than me; I went against everything He ever asked of me…but He forgave me when I asked for it. It's like…It's…it's just so impossible to describe."

Shadow frowned. "The Creator?"

Silver's eyes were sparkling as he turned to Shadow. "The One who created EVERYTHING. All of the infinite multiverses fit in the palm of His hand. He created time itself and sees everything in every second of every timeline."

Saelvir erupted out of Waerfole's arms and bounded over to Silver. "I, I know who you're talking about! Mommy calls Him the Great Composer because she likes to think that He didn't just speak when He spoke and created everything; she likes to think that He probably sang out of joy."

Aura wordlessly tapped at his communicator, his jaw slack. "Tails? What are the chances of a dimensional anomaly happening that completely heals someone from all ailments, brings them back from being twenty minutes dead, and makes them grow fully functioning wings?"

Tails's hologram sprung out of the watch. "Almost non-existent. Why do you ask?"

Aura cleared his throat. "So for all of that to happen, it would have to be directly influenced somehow?"

"Yes…you sound like you've seen something."

Aura wordlessly turned the hologram so that it faced Silver.

Tails gasped sharply. "Is that SILVER?"

Silver smiled and angled his wings so Tails could see them better. "Miracles are real, you know."

Tails stared in shock for about a minute, not saying anything. His breathing had grown heavy and shaky. Finally he murmured, "oh, my word…this is like seeing a living storybook character…Silver…you look like-."

"Like an angel?" Silver finished. "Oh, trust me, they're a lot more terrifying than this. A LOT."

"Wait; you had an out-of-body experience?"

"I saw the other side. I saw the Creator."

Tails shakily inhaled, his breath shuddering. He was in shock. "I'd known for years but never wanted to admit it…Sonic? I need to think about some things. I'll talk to you when I can." Then the hologram vanished.

Chapter Twelve: Flying Among the Stars

A while later, Saelvir floated up to where Silver sat on the castle roof, his golden eyes drinking in the beauty of the stars. Silver had removed his disguise completely and now reveled in how free the wings on his back made him feel.

Silver turned his head as Saelvir landed next to him. "They're spectacular, aren't they? I've never seen stars before."

Saelvir sighed. "…Are you angry at yourself?"

Silver blinked and went on the defensive. "No-."

"I heard you saying earlier that you weren't sure if you were actually really forgiven."

Silver's eyes became filled with bitter regret. "I'm not sure. I make so many mistakes. I failed at keeping my parents alive, I failed at keeping who I am a secret, I failed at...everything ever important. I'm always afraid of failing again."

"But why are you mad at yourself for making mistakes?"

Silver looked away from Saelvir and back up at the stars. "Because I allowed myself to make them."

Saelvir's young voice was filled with confusion and worry. ""But if you've already made them and apologized for making them, why are you still mad at yourself?"

The bitterness in Silver's eyes vanished, replaced by deep thought.

What Saelvir said next, reader, is wisdom that many adults cannot comprehend. Sometimes great wisdom resides in the heart of a child; great is the king willing to let a child talk to him. "Mommy says that the Great Composer forgives our sins and then tosses them into the depths of the sea. He knows we made mistakes, but He completely forgives us when we ask Him to. If you still feel guilty, then it's because you're forcing yourself to. Not because you're not forgiven."

Silver's eyes went wide and he sat up, staring at his four-year-old doppelganger.

Saelvir continued. "Aura says that he's not at all mad at you for hiding the fact that you're a time traveler. He says he probably would've done the same thing. And even though Shadow's kinda mean, he says he's not angry at you either."

Silver smiled. "Thanks. I needed to hear that."

Saelvir grinned, revealing his missing two front teeth.

Silver chuckled. "How high can you fly with your telekinesis?"

Saelvir thought. "I can only get up to the roof of the castle."

"Would you like to go up to where clouds are?"

Saelvir's eyes lit up. He started to bounce excitedly.

Silver picked Saelvir up and set his little doppelganger on his back between his wings. "Hold on tight to my shoulders, okay?" Then he spread his massive wings and leapt into the air.

The two of them climbed rapidly. Finally, they flew through a cloud and out into a wonderland.

The stars were gloriously bright from that high up, and their individual colors could easily be seen. It was shockingly beautiful. Millions and millions of shimmering little points of light swept across the black of night, shining out so brightly that they shed enough light to see down below. Someone with good eyes would've been able to read a book by the light of the stars alone. The vibrant color of day is a wonderful thing, but night brings a peaceful, magical air and a shimmering calm look to the world. Blue, sliver, black, and white layered over one another in a dance of the calm. Night truly is a beautiful time.

Silver and Saelvir both gasped in awe. "It's so pretty!" Saelvir breathed.

Silver nodded, too breathtaken to say anything. "Is…is this what dreams are like?" he finally managed to get out.

Saelvir giggled. "Sometimes they're better."

Silver was overtaken by euphoria, so much so that tears began to drip out of his eyes. He drew the pure air into his lungs, reveling in the simple fact that he could breathe such clear air.

Saelvir hugged Silver around the neck. "Thank you…"

Silver smiled. "I should be the one thanking you. You've been…it's kind of funny. You've been a bit of an example for me, and yet I'm older by ten years. You've showed me that real joy lies in helping others, be it making them laugh or comforting them."

Saelvir sighed in sheer content. "Well, only thinking of yourself is just mean. It does nothing but make you sad."

Silver grinned. "There you go again, saying blatant truth. You're a wise kid."

Saelvir wasn't paying attention. "Can we fly up and take a star home to show everyone?"

Silver replied, "If we took a star home, it might be missed. It's better to leave them where they are. Besides, I don't know if I can fly that high."

Reader, Silver was being fully serious. He was not stupid; he just didn't know what stars were, having never once seen them before that night. He didn't know about planets and outer space and the solar system; no one had ever been able to teach him about that kind of thing. His entire childhood had been fire and rubble and smoke. Things that might seem very normal to you or me seemed beyond magical to him; unlike you or me, he had not grown used to miracles like stars and clean air. It often takes being removed from these things to make one truly appreciate them, and when someone with child-like innocence discovers these wonders, it is a beautiful experience.

So Silver and Saelvir both took one last look at the stars, longing to touch them, before Silver angled his wings downwards and the two of them glided down into the window of the bedroom they were staying in.

Suddenly an enraged Vibran slashed the door apart and thundered in, his eyes blazing with green energy. Thankfully everyone had dove for cover when he'd diced the door, but they weren't out of the frying pan just yet, for Vibran screamed at the top of his lungs, "LORD MILES WAERFOLE, TELL ME WHERE MY SON IS OR I'LL MAKE YOU TELL ME!"

Waerfole flew up to a windowsill about thirty feet above the floor to escape Vibran, who had a crazed rage in his eyes. Narrowing his eyes, the war veteran retracted his mechanical hand. The opening of the cylinder that held all of the modes for his hand began to glow red.

Vibran noticed the glow. "TREASON?"

"It's set on stun, you royal hedgeface." Waerfole called back, aiming the laser cannon at Vibran. "You need to calm down."

"I will NOT calm down when one of my children is MISSING!" Vibran screamed back. "You haven't answered any of my messages about where Shedow is! Sonaic and Saelvir came when we called, but not Shedow! You were the last one that saw him; TELL ME WHERE HE IS!"

Waerfole had a LOOK in his eyes; that protective spark had grown into a roaring flame. "Vibran, I CAN'T! What I can tell you is that he got into a rather odd predicament and I'm doing everything I physically CAN to get him back out!"

"You put him in DANGER?!"

"I had nothing to do with it! It was a freak accident, alright?!"

Vibran lost his temper. It was a fearful sight; his pupils, in fact his eyes entirely, were enveloped in a roaring green flame. The same flames erupted around the blades of energy coming out of Vibran's hands. An eerie green glow rose deep in Vibran's throat and shone out through his gritted teeth.

Waerfole's pupils shrank to dots. Then he steeled himself and fired a blast at Vibran.

Vibran dodged it and leapt impossibly high into the air, embedding his energy swords into the wall so that he hung there. He began to climb rapidly, twisting out of the way of Waerfole's numerous stun blasts.

Finally Waerfole quit firing and clicked his mechanical hand into place again. He fired it like a grappling hook and line at a beam about twenty feet from him and zipped away just before Vibran could grab his ankle; or so he thought. Vibran's hand closed on his ankle just as his shoes left the sill. The beam began to creak under the weight of both of them. "Vibran, stop!"

Vibran refused to let go. "Tell me where Shedow is!"

Then the beam snapped with a mighty CRACK, slamming down onto Waerfole's head and knocking him out. His mechanical hand released and he plummeted, taking Vibran with him. At the same time, a piece of the beam dropped towards Nebula on the ground below.

Shadow hurtled out of his hiding spot and knocked Nebula out of the way of the beam while Aura blasted up to Waerfole, caught him, and blew apart the part of the beam following him with a barrage of chaos spears.

Vibran was just in the process of realizing he might have unwittingly caused his own death when a pair of strong arms caught him and everyone in the room was surrounded with aqua bubble-like shields. It wasn't until all the parts of the beam had smashed into the ground and everyone was safe that the shields vanished and Vibran looked up into the face of his rescuer.

"Saelvir?" he gasped. "I just saw you an hour ago, how did you age ten years in an hour?!" Then Vibran spotted the massive pure white wings beating powerfully on his rescuer's back. "No; it can't be. Kieran?"

Silver gracefully landed and set the king down. "Yes, sir." he choked out sheepishly.

"But how in the world do you look exactly like Saelvir?!"

"Because me and the other assistants are from another dimension. Don't get mad at anyone. What happened was an accident. Shedow accidentally collided with Sonic and the two of them were fused, with half of Shedow being pushed out of this dimension. He's okay, but we're still doing everything we can, alright?"

Vibran inhaled sharply. "Shedow got FUSED with someone's doppelganger?"

Aura, who had set Waerfole down on a cot to recover, now zipped over and grinned sheepishly. "He got fused with Sonaic's doppelganger. Who also has the dominant personality. We ended up just saying 'to crud with it' and calling ourselves Aura."

Vibran turned to stare at Aura. "You're Shedow?"

Aura grimaced and half-shrugged. "Erm, kinda. I mean, it's a bit odd how it worked out, he can communicate but he's only able to touch me AND wherever I go, he has to follow."

Vibran frantically grabbed Aura's shoulders and got in his face. "Where is my son!? Please!"

Shedow faded out of the air, a look of shame on his face. "I'm right here, dad."

Vibran gasped and tried to grab Shedow's hand. "Shedow, are you-?!" He trailed off, however, when his hand passed right through Shedow's.

Shedow shuddered and his shoulders began to hitch with sobs.

Shadow walked over and spoke in a serious tone. "King Vibran, we are working as hard as we possibly can. Everyone, even Shedow, is doing their part to help bring him back into this dimension."

Vibran turned and let out an awful coughing sound when he saw Shadow. Abruptly, he yanked Shadow into his arms and clutched him in an embrace. "Please-. Please bring my son back-." he breathed.

Shadow's eyes went wide, and then he did something that nobody expected; he looked down and a hint of a tear slid out of his eye. He just stood and let Vibran embrace him.

Aura's heart skipped a beat; he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He glanced at Shedow, and Shedow was sitting in the air, turned in on himself and not showing any emotion. Sonaic was silently sitting off in a corner, watching all of this play out. Very unlike what he'd been doing when they'd first met. A very, very nasty hunch began to develop in Aura's mind; a nasty hunch and an idea.

Chapter Thirteen: Family Reunion

Silver woke up the next morning with shining eyes and euphoria on his face.

Shadow, who was standing off in a corner and creepily watching as usual, frowned. "What's that look for?"

Silver was beaming as he replied, "I dreamed for the first time ever!"

Shadow narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Huh?"

Silver sat up and stretched, his big wings unfolding completely for a moment and then folding again. "I've had nightmares all my life, but last night I had an actual dream. I dreamed that I was able to fly up to where the stars are and hold one."

Shadow seemed severely confused. "To-. Wait, what? Do you not have any knowledge of basic astronomy? The solar system?"

Silver cocked his head. "What's the solar system?"

Shadow stood there for a second as he tried to make sense of the fact that a fourteen-year-old didn't know what the solar system was. "The planets orbiting the sun, one of which is Mobius. The sun is one of many stars that are in outer space."

"The sun is a STAR?"

Shadow was flabbergasted. "How do you not know this!? Didn't your mother or father teach you about this kind of thing?"

Silver shook his head. "They taught me how to tell the difference between clean and poisoned water, how to use my telekinesis to shield myself, the most common spots to find food in, and that kind of thing. Mom told me a lot of stories about the Freedom Fighters and also about things like the sun and grass and stars, but she only told me what they were like, not what they were."

Shadow stared at Silver.

Reader, the reason Shadow why was so confused was something like the opposite of why Silver thought he could touch stars. All Shadow could remember of his childhood had taken place in a base floating in Mobius's orbit. He had known things like the names of stars and what the sun was made out of was from very early on and simply could not comprehend the idea of someone not knowing what stars and space were, ultimate lifeform though he may have been.

Silver went on. "But last night, I dreamed that I flew up to the stars and touched one. It felt like a warm soft blanket."

Shadow groaned. "That was probably a sensory response to you feeling a blanket tangled around your wing in your sleep."

"Oh, hush." Silver grinned. "I had my first good dream last night. Stop trying to be dorky."

"I'm NOT being-!"

Suddenly a knock on the door interrupted the argument. Aura stood there when Shadow opened the door. A dark look was on his face, and on Shedow's, too; they were mentally linked, after all. Each of them was drastically affected by the other's moods, but at the moment both of them appeared to have the same mood; apprehensive concern for Shadow.

Shadow immediately grew serious. "What is it?"

Aura and Shedow both replied, speaking at once. "There's something Lord Waerfole needs to test. He needs you."

Shadow suppressed a shiver. "Never do that again. What does he need me for?"

Aura sighed. "Shadow…for as long as I've known you, you've been trying to figure out who you are. Waerfole told me last night that he's actually made a concoction that restores the cranial pathways damaged by head trauma. He made something that gets rid of amnesia entirely, Shadow."

Shadow narrowed his eyes. "What are you two playing at?"

"Nothing." Shedow answered. "We saw an opportunity and took it. The one side effect is that it'll make you a bit dizzy before it kicks in."

Shadow became lost in thought. Finally he spoke again after a few minutes. "I'll do it."

Aura nodded. "Come to the lab when you're ready, then."

"Good morning, Shadow." Lord Waerfole called as Shadow and Silver walked into the lab. He strode up to Shadow and held out a small glass bottle that was filled with dark orange liquid. "I was made aware that you have no knowledge of your identity."

Shadow seemed to be having an inner war. "I...my empty past haunts me day to day. Please. Will this restore even memories from my youth?"

"Yes. I've been told that it's like having a playthrough of your entire life happen in a second."

"Hmm…" Shadow mused. He took the bottle from Waerfole and removed the cap. His hand trembled slightly. Then in one swift motion, he raised the bottle and drained it completely.

Shadow was immediately hit with horrible nausea and vertigo. He stumbled and tried to keep the orange liquid from making a rather unpleasant reappearance. His world was spinning and warping before his eyes; and then memories started flooding back.

Aura saw Shadow's pupils shrink to dots and saw his friend's chest start heaving with gasps. He caught Shadow as the ageless half-alien's legs collapsed under him and urgently asked, "What is it? What do you see?"

Shadow inhaled sharply and horror spread over his face. "No. No." he whimpered. "No, he can't have-." His wide eyes became wider and he cut off. Then suddenly he let out a scream of pain loud enough that the entire castle heard it and began to thrash wildly.

Hordes of servants came running, but they were shooed away by Opal and Vibran, who shut and bolted the (repaired) lab door behind them. "What's going on?!" Opal gasped.

Aura pinned Shadow's arms down. "Explain later, pin down NOW!" he grunted. "If he gets free, chaos spears are gonna start flying everywhere! He'll blow up the entire castle by accident!"

Everyone in the room rushed over and helped restrain Shadow, who had gone into some kind of frenzy.

Shadow arched his back and let out another, louder scream and suddenly stopped struggling. He was now staring up at the ceiling with terrified eyes, his entire body shaking with each shuddering gasp he took. Tears started to stream from his eyes, but he didn't sob. He just kept staring at nothing, a look of horror and fear and shock on his face.

Everyone hesitantly let go of him.

Shadow slowly sat up, still shaking. "I-I-I-I c-can't believe it…" he finally choked out. "S-Sonic…we're brothers."

Aura's eyes bugged out. "WHAT?"

Shadow's trembling started to subside. "It was years and years ago, back when you were too young to remember anything. I was sucked into a time portal and thrown about fifty years into the past. Onto the ARK. Where Gerald Robotnik found me and twisted me into-. Into-." He broke off and started to tremble again.

"Into the Ultimate Lifeform." Aura finished in an awed voice. "OH, MY COW?! You're my twin brother that vanished when I was two!"

Shadow was shivering like a leaf in a hurricane. "All those experiments...he never used anesthesia...I remember FEELING my cells mutating...watching myself become a...a...a monster, a freak of science, I'm nothing but a kid who got kidnapped and experimented on-." He suddenly looked up at Aura, shame in his eyes. "Oh my word. All those years I called my brother my archenemy…"

Aura didn't know how to feel. Part of him wanted to be shocked beyond belief, to start crying and to try to get over the fact that he had a brother. The other part overrode the first and made him feel only mildly surprised. He knew that it was Sonic and Shedow's emotions each trying to stuff down the other, but he felt AWFUL. Shadow was talking to HIM, to SONIC, and yet Aura could only manage mild surprise. Anger rose in him and he howled, "DARN YOU, SHEDOW, FOR MESSING WITH MY EMOTIONS AT A TIME LIKE THIS!" Then he went limp and let himself fall facedown on the ground, where he started quietly sobbing.

Shedow was taken aback. "I n-never meant to…I, I tried to let you…"

Shadow gazed at Aura. Then his ears fell flat against his skull and his face twisted into a horrible expression of grief. "It's my fault this happened. I slammed into you when you had the emeralds out. I should've slowed down earlier."

Aura got up and pulled Shadow to his feet. "I…I'm not angry at you, I'm just…angry. Mainly at myself."

Shadow grinned and wiped away a tear. "No need for that…brother."

Aura and Shadow embraced.

Saelvir suddenly came running in wailing. "Daddy, I had a nigh'mare and there was smoke and fire and I was the only one who wasn't dead!"

Silver inhaled sharply. "Oh, DEAR."

Then Waerfole spoke. "It's proved!"

Shadow cocked his head. "What's proved?"

Waerfole sighed. "Aura's theory that everyone except Silver is being affected by their doppelgangers. The anomaly pushed Silver out of frequency so that he's not affected, but everyone else, including Saelvir, is being affected."

Aura nodded, growing serious. "When we first got here, Saelvir had a lisp, Sonaic was flighty, and Shedow was just afraid. Now just a day and a half later, Saelvir's lisp is gone, Sonaic is off in the corner thinking, and Shedow has gotten angsty. Shadow was closed off and didn't show any emotion, nor had he ever once fainted in his entire life. Now Shadow is freakishly open about his emotions and has trouble with fainting when surprised; just like Shedow. Saelvir just had a nightmare about a place that he's never seen or even heard of anything remotely like it. But Silver lived in that place for all his life up until a few days ago."

Shadow's eyes widened. "I-. I-." He thought for a minute. "That actually makes sense…I kept wondering why my emotions were getting so extreme. Turns out they were being influenced by a twelve-year-old."

Shedow nodded. "And…I don't know why you're just so…ANGRY. I felt myself wanting to rage a lot more often."

Opal spoke up. "I noticed last night that Sonaic was oddly calm and quiet."

Aura cringed. "And I've been biting my tongue for a LOT of really immature things I've wanted to say. Eesh."

Waerfole's brow furrowed in worry. "This is a serious situation. Since you are affecting each other emotionally, the physical problems will begin soon."

"PHYSICAL PROBLEMS?" Shadow bellowed. "You're kidding, right!?"

Waerfole shook his head. "This fusion of two worlds is starting to become unstable. You have been here too long. Soon your dimensional signature will become erratic and possibly even fuse with that of your doppelgangers. Silver might be the only one left; Saelvir's dimensional signature was destabilized from the time before the anomaly messed with Silver's."

Sonaic shivered. "Erratic? What would happen?"

"Goodness knows!" Waerfole shrugged. "It could affect everything from your physicality to your age to what your favorite food is or even mess with-."

Suddenly Aura's figure started to warp and blur, almost like he was glitching. Aura let out a loud yelp. "WAERFOLE! It's not supposed to start this early!"

Waerfole exhaled. "At best we have the rest of today to figure out how to get you back home before the instability fuses you and the kids."

"What would happen if we did fuse?" Shadow hesitantly asked.

"Both of your personalities would be at war for control and it would probably end up killing both of you."

At the words "killing both of you," the room filled with tension. Mobians and Moabians alike were both in very, very real danger and the group only had the rest of the day at best before their death fell upon them.

Chapter Fourteen: Angel

"Call Tails right now and tell him to book it looking for the emeralds!"

"I haven't been able to contact him since yesterday evening, Shadow! I can't tell him to hurry if I can't call him in the first place!"

Suddenly the portal that Waerfole and the rest had been feverishly building shorted out and exploded apart. That had been their one chance of getting home.

Silver broke the ensuing horrified silence. "Oh, CRUD."

Saelvir whimpered. "D-daddy?" The little four-year-old started to gasp. Suddenly he grew an inch taller in half a second. "DADDY?! WHAT'S HAPPENING?!"

Shedow let out a yell of pain and clutched his hand. Large claws ripped apart his gloves and a large amount of grey fur grew around both his wrists. "HUH?!"

Claws grew out of the fingertips of Aura's gloves. "Oh, GREAT!" he yelled.

Sonaic wavered and his face turned pale with nausea. "Don' feel ver' good all of a sudden…" he moaned. Then his eyes bulged and he had to sprint over to the window, where his breakfast made an unpleasant reappearance.

Saelvir grew again, and again. His high voice was starting to change, to grow slightly deeper. "HELP!"

Shadow's eyes bugged out and he flailed wildly, trying to keep his balance. He suddenly fell upwards and slammed into the ceiling, which was thankfully only ten feet up. "WAERFOLE, MAKE IT STOP!"

Shedow was letting out strained groans of pain. His ears had become long and wolfish and his fur had grown crazily long. He inhaled sharply and slapped at the back of his skates with his big clawed hands. Just in time, too. The second that the skates fell apart, his paws bulged, becoming massive and growing razor-sharp claws.

Aura made a sound like someone had performed the Heimlich on him. "HRGH!" The fabric top of his shoes stretched to reveal that Aura's paws had grown, too. "Worse than that incident with Dark Gaia-." he grunted.

Saelvir was hyperventilating as he grew taller and older by the second. His body may have been aging, his older brain may have allowed him more complex cognition, but he was still a four-year-old in what was now a fourteen-year-old's body. He looked nearly exactly like Silver at this point; except that when he screamed, his front two teeth were still missing.

Shedow was panicking. "Someone help me, for the love of sanity someone please help me!" he wailed. His short spikey tail grew into a long wolfish tail as his figure grew more muscled. "GAH!"

Sonaic's nausea vanished, but his fingers and then his hands and then his wrists turned into steel. The joints were replaced with hinges and still the steel crept farther and farther up his arms. He let out a shriek.

Shedow screamed as his muzzle elongated into a more wolfish shape and his fangs grew to a massive size.

Silver bellowed, "SCATTER IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!"

Everyone who could fled in the opposite direction from their doppelganger and the chaos settled.

Aura's figure stopped glitching to reveal that he looked like a mild version of what had happened to Shedow. This meant that, although his paws were larger than normal, they weren't large enough to rip his shoes open, which meant that he couldn't take his shoes off even though his feet really, really hurt.

The robotic change stopped traveling up Sonaic's arms right before it hit his shoulders and gave him considerable relief. "Nobody fire an EMP, okay?"

Shedow stood up awkwardly and looked at himself. "Now I'm a ghost AND a monster…" he whimpered.

Saelvir was hysterically bawling his eyes out on Vibran's shoulder.

Tears started to drip out of Vibran's eyes. "Oh my word. My little baby boy...he's...he's..."

Silver walked over and knelt by Saelvir and Vibran. His golden eyes were filled with compassion.

Without warning, someone unfamiliar opened the door. "VIBRAN, WHAT IS ALL THIS MADNESS I JUST WALKED IN ON?!" she bellowed.

Vibran's eyes bulged and he leapt up. "Mom! Mom, I can explain-. I thought I told you what happened last night?"

"NO."

Vibran wilted. "I-I-I shall, uh, shall explain, then." The two of them walked out and shut the door behind them.

Silver wrapped his arms and then his wings around Saelvir. "Shh, shh, you're gonna be okay…" he breathed, slowly rocking back and forth to calm Saelvir down.

Saelvir shuddered, let out a hiccupping sob, and subsided.

"Uh, Waerfole?" Shadow sheepishly called from the ceiling. "A little help? I'm kind of stuck up here."

Waerfole shrugged. "I can't help you. Nothing I have reverses gravity. All this can't impede the effort to make the portal creator. We need to keep moving forward."

Aura said in a strained voice, "Please cut my shoes open, my feet are KILLING me."

"No time for that. Suck it up and get to work going through those equations."

Everyone got to work. A little while later, Shadow called, "Silver."

"Not now." Silver replied; he was still calming Saelvir down, rocking his doppelganger back and forth.

"For the love of-. Hurry up and get up here! I found something in my hammerspace that might help!"

"Go. I'm okay." Saelvir sniffled.

Silver let go of Saelvir and flew up to where Shadow was. "What is it?"

Shadow pulled out an oddly-shaped gadget the size of a sketchbook. "Don't ask, but I have a portal creator. The only problem is that it needs chaos energy to power it."

Silver frowned. "...You had this all along and you didn't tell anyone?"

Shadow blushed. "I, uh... multiple bouts of amnesia do take their toll on just ordinary memory."

Silver started getting an idea. "You said the portal creator takes chaos energy?"

"Yes…why?"

Silver flew down and took off all of his cuffs. "I know what to do."

Shadow gasped. "Wait; don't! Silver, that's dangerous! You could kill yourself!"

A firestorm of aqua chaos energy erupted around Silver, whirling around him in a cyclone of pure power. "I was the one that got you guys into this messy situation in the first place. I lied to you, I fought you, I sat around and did nothing while you two worked. I am choosing to finally be of use." A light on the side of the portal creator turned on.

"SILVER, NO!" Aura shrieked.

Silver's power was being sucked out of him, but still he pushed. So much energy was crackling around him that the tiled floor beneath him started to burn and shatter. The ground was shaking and windows started to blow out. Aura yanked Silver away from the device, but still he let his power flow.

"Why?! Why are you doing this?!" Aura wailed. "You're killing yourself!"

Silver looked up at Aura. "To give YOU a future, great-grandfather. To give you a happy life with Amy."

"BUT-!"

The portal creator powered on, but it was sparking and short-circuiting.

Shadow gasped in horror. "Silver, stop! It's unstable! I thought it would still be fully functional, but it's broken! IT'S GOING TO KILL YOU AND THEN MALFUNCTION!"

Silver's eyes went wide, but, try as he might, he couldn't stop the flow of energy. "Oh-. WHY CAN'T I DO ANYTHING RIGHT?!"

Shadow suddenly dropped from the ceiling, and at the same time, Shedow solidified. Aura's red eye turned green and his shoes stopped bulging. All the stripes on his body vanished and his cape turned back into a neckerchief. He was back to being Sonic; albeit Sonic with markings on his head and rocket skates.

The portal creator bucked, fizzled, and then blasted a raging whirlpool of a portal into the air. Silver was dragged towards it and sucked in, but a hand caught his and pulled him halfway out; Sonic.

Shadow grabbed Silver's other hand and then the two brothers both fired up their air skates and started trying to pull Silver fully out of the portal, straining with exertion as they held on and let the thrust of the air skates push them backwards. However, the portal was a strong one and slowly Silver started getting sucked back in.

Sonic went dark and roared in a voice that shook the entire castle, "I'M NOT LETTING YOU GO THAT EASY!" He pounded his feet THROUGH the floor, braced himself, and heaved with all of his earth-shattering strength.

Shadow howled, "COMMAND OVERRIDE C!" and all of his limiter rings dropped to the ground. There was an explosion of red energy around him.

Slowly but surely, the two titans pulled Silver out of the portal's grasp.

There was a flash of blinding light and Tails teleported in, blasting the portal apart with a chaos spear. His figure was glowing and flashing. Yellow and red birds made of pure energy surrounded him.

Sonic's face lit up. "TAILS! You have the greatest timing, oh my goodness."

Tails said nothing, but quickly set off some kind of ray that made the air itself ripple. "That was a dimensional equalizer. Now you and your doppelgangers won't kill each other. I've stabilized the fluctuations to the point where they won't happen again. But it was only thanks to that massive energy surge that I was able to find where you guys had ended up. What in the world made that? It was like someone set off a whopper of a chaos blast and went super at the same time."

Shadow frowned. "Massive energy sur- Silver, that was YOU!"

Silver sat up and put his cuffs back on. "It was?"

Sonic chuckled. "You just created a cross-dimensional rescue beacon and single-handedly saved all of our lives."

Shedow spoke up. "And you somehow yanked me back into this dimension."

Sonic chuckled. "Enough energy was in the area that it messed with my molecules just enough so that we could split. I may still have a little bit of your DNA, but only a little. That and these air skates. I'm NOT getting new shoes. They're like hover shoes! No way I'm letting these things go to waste."

Shedow giggled. "Nice to finally meet you."

Sonicsnorted and replied, "Same here."

Tails spotted Shedow. "What happened to YOU?"

Shedow glowered. "Dimensional nonsense. Listen, I'm fine. Do you have anything that could help Sonaic or Saelvir?"

Tails's figure stopped flashing, the birds vanished, and seven large gems fell away from him, appearing out of nowhere. He walked over to Sonaic. "May I see your arms?"

Sonaic held out his robotic arms. "You look a lot like Lord Waerfole does in the old pictures that Dad sometimes shows me."

Tails was lost in thought. "Looks like you somehow got half-teleported into a roboticizer in another dimension. When it happened, did you feel sick?"

Sonaic made a face. "I'll say. The gardeners are not going to have a nice time cleaning under _that_ window. Bleugh."

Tails shrugged. "I don't have anything that removes roboticization."

Sonaic's ears lay flat against his skull. "Great." he grumbled.

"But I am an expert in robotics. If one of your arms ever shorts out or something, just get ahold of me."

Sonaic still seemed unsure. "Do I have to change their batteries, or-?"

Tails shook his head, chuckling. "No. You see how your arm sort melts into the metal here? They're not bolted on; they're powered by your energy."

"So if someone fires an EMP or something, they won't short out?"

"They might, but there's always tinfoil."

"Very funny. Are they waterproof? There's this pond that my brothers and I like to go swimming in."

Tails grinned at Sonic. "Oh, he's definitely different from you, Mr. Afraid-of-stepping-in-puddles."

Sonic scowled. "I just don't like water because I never learned how to swim well."

Shadow suddenly bellowed, "ORCA!"

Sonic let out a high-pitched squeal and bounced up onto the top of a bookshelf. Then he abruptly realized that Shadow had been teasing him and glowered down at his grinning brother. "I have a reason to be afraid of orcas! They get really mean in captivity! I was attacked by several!"

Saelvir had a look of horror on his face. "You keep orcas in captivity?! WHY?! Why would anyone be so MEAN?"

Tails turned and saw Saelvir sitting cross-legged on the floor. He blinked and did a major double take. "Huh?"

Silver walked over to Saelvir and helped him up, affectionately hugging the four-year-old from the side. He'd grown to really like his doppelganger's company over the past day and a half; it was almost like having a little brother. "This is Saelvir. He's actually supposed to be four, but…more dimensional nonsense."

Tails sounded like he'd been hit by a small tree. "He's…four."

Saelvir nodded.

Tails tried to say something, but no sound came out. Finally his shock broke. "Well, what are you wanting me to do?! It's not like I have a ray that just reverses time!"

Waerfole inhaled sharply. "I just realized that I actually have something that might work." He started rummaging around on the shelves of chemicals. "Invisibility, enhanced strength, personality switcher, extreme inflammation knock-out…Found it!" Waerfole leapt over to Saelvir and opened the top of a phial filled with sparkling green liquid. "Ten years…precisely a tablespoon…Saelvir? I want you to close your eyes and hold your breath. Don't let any of this get in your mouth, okay?"

Silver let go and stepped back as Saelvir took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and waited.

Waerfole dripped a spoonful of the liquid onto Saelvir. The instant the last drop splashed onto the top of Saelvir's head, the liquid vanished and Saelvir shrunk back down to his four-year-old self.

Saelvir opened his eyes, looked at himself, and then hugged Waerfole's leg. "Thank you, uncle Waerfole." he breathed.

Just then, Vibran walked back in, grimacing. When he saw Saelvir, however, he shot over at crazy speeds and swept Saelvir into his arms, tears streaming from his eyes.

Waerfole grinned down at a very surprised Tails. "Well, hello, you. GEEZ...this is bringing back so many memories of when I was just a little squirt following Vibran around...we had a grand time together..."

Tails grinned and stuck his hand out. "Pleasure to meet you, sir."

Waerfole shook Tails's hand, nostalgia in his eyes. "And it's a pleasure to meet you."

Vibran chuckled. "Brings back memories of all the good old times, doesn't it?"

Waerfole let go of Tails's hand and sighed, a smile on his face. "We were two happy little goobers, weren't we?"

Vibran frowned, striding over to where Waerfole stood. "Y'know, when was the last time we just hung out and talked?"

"I think it was about six months ago."

"GOOD GRACIOUS! Well...I do have servants and secretaries for a sweet frackling reason! I need to let them do the paperwork for once and actually hang out with my best friend."

Waerfole and Vibran both laughed and fist bumped each other.

Shadow and Sonic were in the middle of a heated teasing battle. "Oh, so I'm too trigger-happy?" Shadow was saying. "This coming from the blue pineapple that doesn't even know where the trigger is on a gun?"

Sonic grinned. "Crawl back into my shadow, emo porcupine."

Shadow looked like he'd been slapped and didn't know how to react. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

Sonic burst into laughter. "I don't mean it and you know I don't mean it!"

Shadow didn't answer, but a look of despair crossed his face.

Sonic trailed off. "I'm sorry."

Shadow shook his frozen-ness away. "Please tell me that as your brother I'm still allowed to slap you across the room."

Tails inhaled sharply. "As his WHAT?"

Sonic grinned and cuffed Shadow playfully. "Shadow got his memory back and it turns out he's my twin brother that went missing when we were both two. Got sent back in time and captured."

Shadow smiled, content. "If we had not come here, then I would never have discovered my identity."

Sonic jumped in. "And I would never have realized that I DO have the nerve to talk to Amy. You done good, Silver. You done some real good."

Silver's golden eyes widened. ""You mean that I didn't mess up after all?"

Tails chuckled. "On the contrary, you did something that benefitted two worlds."

Waerfole walked over and grinned. "I hope to see you four again."

Tails proudly held up the portal creator. "Oh, trust me, you will! I fixed this thing and linked it to this world! We can come back whenever we want!"

Sonic sighed. "Let's go home."

Chapter Fifteen: Shining Like A Star

Silver appeared back in the little shelter he called home. He immediately started coughing. After he settled down, he sighed. He knew that being back in his original time would nullify all of the time his lungs had had to heal back in the past, but…it was for the best. Now he could fly above the smoke, fly to clearer areas, help people. The big pair of white wings on his back was there for a reason.

All these thoughts and many more spun through his mind like dandelion seeds riding a summer wind as he collected his very few belongings. After doing so, he walked over to two graves at the edge of his shelter, pulled two flowers out of his hammerspace, and gently placed them on the graves. Silver smiled bitterly. "Dad, mom...I'll never forget you. But I have to leave to stay alive. I...I brought these for you. The flowers you kept talking about...I've seen them. I've seen what the world looked like before...whatever it was that happened. I...I'm g-g-gonna miss you. But I have to leave. I've been given the ability to help people, REALLY help them. Do-. Do you see?"

"Yes, Silver. I see." his mother's voice said. Her glowing golden figure was standing before him. She bent down and stroked his wing, a massive smile of pride on her face. "They feel so strong, so light…I bet it feels wonderful to have the wind under your wings."

Silver's father affectionately enveloped Silver in a bear hug. "And what's this I hear about you going on an adventure with my grandpa? You couldn't bring me along?"

Silver chuckled. "Dad, I was nearly dead!"

Silver's mother tenderly placed her hand on Silver's shoulder. "Silver, I'm so, so proud of you. From the day you were born, I knew you were going to do great things, and now you've gone and proven me right at just fourteen years old. You have always been my shining little star."

Tears of bitter joy were flowing out of Silver's eyes. His body shook with sobs. "I m-miss you so much!" he choked out as he stood up.

His mother and father stood up. "Go save the world, my silver star." his mother cooed.

Suddenly a familiar voice spoke. "Hey. Kid."

Silver whirled to see the last person he expected. "Shadow?"

Shadow was indeed standing at the entrance of Silver's shelter. He looked older, more worn, tougher. But he had a kinder look in his red eyes and a smile on his face. "Took me forever to find you."

Silver beat his wings and flew up to Shadow, the draft from his wings blowing flakes of ash everywhere. "But-. You were back in the past."

Shadow grinned. "Uncle Shads doesn't age, Silver. Toldja I'd've found out anyway." The black and red hedgehog sat down and looked out over the burning city, motioning for Silver to come sit next to him. Once Silver had sat, Shadow continued. "Been years and years since the Flame Wraith attacked and destroyed everything. People are starting to figure out how to survive. Silver, you have a core of steel and a heart of gold. Your spirit burns brighter than any flame. The Creator made you to be a fighter, a warrior for people. Just, compassionate; there are times when I wish I could be more like you. I know you want to help rebuild civilization, but…did you ever think that there might be another way you're supposed to help people? Perhaps a way to start at the root of the problem?"

Silver frowned. "What are you trying to say?"

Shadow nodded towards a spark that had appeared in the air while the two of them had been talking. "Why don't I let them explain?"

The spark suddenly came alive, zipping around like a high-speed firefly and tearing a hole in the air. Two wild-eyed figures came rocketing out frantically.

Silver's eyes widened. "Sonic? Shadow? What are you DOING here?!"

Sonic coughed and replied, "One could ask the same thing of you."

Shadow of the past exasperatedly bit out, "You gave us a heart attack!"

Silver glided down to them. "You-. You came looking for me?"

Shadow of Silver's time called from the entrance, "You were sucked into that time portal for a reason, you know. You were happy, healthy, you had friends. Back in the past, you could do some GOOD things. Prepare people for what's going to happen and protect them in the meantime. You are the reason people survive the apocalypse at all."

Silver blinked. "You…you're wanting me to go back? But I feel like I'm supposed to help people here."

Sonic grabbed hold of Silver's shoulders. "We're begging you to come back! Everybody back home loves you! You're strong, just, kind-. The very vision of a hero. Please."

Silver's golden eyes filled with worry. "But-. But what if I mess up again?"

Shadow of Silver's time jumped down into the shelter. "Everybody messes up, kid. Even I do. Go with them. I'm proof that there's no paradox incoming. The timeline is cause and effect. You'll do some great things, Silver. Took me this long to find you, but I can tell you right now that you're gonna be a hero that'll be remembered even through the apocalypse. They'll call you an angel."

Silver's wings and ears drooped. "But…what, what about the Flame Wraith, it's gonna…" Suddenly he inhaled. "Oh, my word. Something just dawned on me. ANGEL. I know how to KILL the Flame Wraith." A massive grin formed on his face. "Sonic! The, the, the, uh, CHAOS EMERALDS! Do you have all seven?!"

Sonic blinked. "Yeah…why?"

Silver was bouncing excitedly. "I need them!"

Sonic hesitantly handed over the emeralds. "O…kay…"

Silver snatched them away and sprinted over to one of the two graves. He frantically started digging and after a few seconds pulled out a necklace with a large intricate pendant. The pendant had seven emerald-shaped cases in it. "My mom had the gift of prophecy; that's why we stayed alive for so long! But there was one prophecy that never made sense to me until NOW! 'An angel shall take the necklace around my neck, insert the seven, and bring an end to the living flames!' She was talking about ME; I mean the me of now, with my wings! I'm supposed to save the world!"

Shadow of the past frowned. "Are you going to try to cram the emeralds into those tiny holes?"

Sonic didn't turned his head as he spoke. "Shadow, the emeralds have a mind of their own. If they're supposed to fit in there, they will."

Silver opened the covers to the containers. The emeralds floated out of his arms of their own accord and shrunk down until they clicked perfectly into place. Silver was laughing giddily. "I even know where to find the creature, it was what killed my parents in the first place-. This is how I'll save the future. By saving it in the moment and not in the past." He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and put the necklace on.

An explosion of sheer power shook the earth as Silver was enveloped in a whirlwind of whiteish-gold energy. He was lifted into the air. Then there was a ka-BOOM of even more power being released and Silver's figure turned shining white-gold. His pupils were blotted out in the glow that lit up the city for miles around. It looked like a star had descended from the heavens to sweep away the eternal darkness that covered Mobius. Silver was glowing too bright to look at and that combined with his massive, powerful wings beating behind him made him look almost angelic.

"WHAT KINDA SUPER FORM IS THAT?!" Sonic screeched, trying to hold his ground amidst the hurricane of chaos power.

Shadow of Silver's time yelled back, "Can't even look at it-. It's not as bad as hyper form, but GOOD GOSH, it's BRIGHT! I think it's called Shining Silver! It enhances specifically telekinesis, way more than a normal super form or even hyper form! Right now, he could squish the moon into powder if he wanted to! If you had that necklace on, then YOU'D have telekinesis! That's how strong this form makes him! He doesn't even have to see what he's moving; he **_knows_**!"

For the first time in his life, Sonic was shocked into silence.

Silver surrounded the three watchers in telekinetic shields and rocketed into the skies, carrying them with him. He flew at insane speeds to a part of the city where fire swirled into a mile-wide cyclone that roared down into a deep abyss. Silver set the threesome on top of a nearby building, flew back out, and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. After a few seconds, a gargantuan creature with a terrifying skull-like face and a body made entirely out of flames catapulted itself out of the abyss, snarling at the lone star that dared defy it.

Silver held his ground and simply stared the two-thousand foot tall Flame Wraith down, no trace of fear in his glowing gaze. Then he held out his hand.

A huge shield formed around the monster. It shrunk and compacted, crushing the Wraith inside. The Wraith let out a horrible screech; but not as bad as the one it let out just a few seconds later.

Massive blades formed out of telekinetic energy started ripping the Wraith to shreds inside the still shrinking shield. Silver relentlessly kept crushing and slashing the Wraith, physically doing nothing but slowly closing his hand into a fist and beating his wings to stay aloft.

Finally, after the Wraith had been squished into a ball a few hundred feet in diameter, Silver turned to the three awestruck watchers and sang out, overjoyed, "Follow me, follow me!" The earth shook as he shot off in a streak of light.

The two Shadows teleported with Sonic to the sea, where Silver had flown out over the water. A group of survivors was watching the spectacle from the shoreline; and what a spectacle it was.

Silver raised his arms and howled, "YOUR TIME OF DESTRUCTION HAS ENDED!" Then he swung his arms down and the Flame Wraith was flung into the ocean.

The Wraith let out a grating scream and tried to escape as its flames started to die, but Silver forced it down. Hundreds and hundreds of gallons of steam were being thrown into the air and still Silver forced the monster down. Finally, five minutes after Silver had hurled the Wraith into the water, it died with a final scream.

Wild cheering erupted from the people on the shoreline and Shadow of Silver's time appeared to be recording the events on his communicator.

But Silver was far from finished. He raised his arms to the skies and started to strain against some invisible force.

Nothing appeared to be happening for a few minutes, but then…

Sonic sniffed the air. "Is it just me, or is it getting easier to breathe?"

Shadow of Silver's time looked beyond flabbergasted. "OH. MY. WORD. I just realized what he's doing. He's pulling all the toxins and smoke from around the world to him."

As Shadow of Silver's time spoke, something sucked away the thick layer of smoke obscuring the sky. Streams of ash, smoke, and poison all compacted together into a mile-wide column that floated over the Flame Wraith's abyss. The column floated down into the hole and plugged it.

Astral light fell upon the ground for the first time in decades. The air was clear and the dirt was poison-free. People could live again.

Silver was dripping with sweat and exhausted, but euphoria filled his soul. He teleported himself and everyone else back to his shelter and went out of Shining form. Then he knelt by his parents' graves and whispered, tears of joy streaming from his eyes, "Thanks, mom. Thanks, dad." Then he stood up. "Now I can go home, knowing that I saved the world. I have more of a home with you guys than I do here. I want to help people. I want to keep people from dying. It's what my parents would've wanted. I know that I've made them proud."

Shadow of Silver's time was chuckling. "Twenty years of looking for you and then THIS is the spectacle I'm gifted with when I do find you. Worth every minute just to see you do THAT. Don't worry, I'll take good care of them."

Silver smiled and handed the emeralds to Sonic. "Let's go home."

And so the three of them stepped into a portal, leaving behind two Astra flowers growing on two graves.

Two hundred years in the past, Sonic, Shadow, and Silver all stepped out of a portal into the Freedom Fighters's mess hall.

Amy stood up so quickly that she knocked over her tea. "Sonic!"

Sonic held up his hand. "Amy, I have to apologize for running off a couple days ago. What Silver said scared me. Badly. I...I wasn't ready to admit that I love you, but I am now. Amy Rose, I am in love with you."

Amy let out a squeal and burst into tears of shock and joy.

Sonic simply winked at Silver.

Silver let himself relax. For the first time in his life, he felt content and at peace.


End file.
